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!!^i'!^.!l!'..^"^.,^J9.^~,'."^.^.- '^^^ ^^^'^ CURREi^Jt A .STAND»\RD LlTrR^URF 




, Vo]. 1i>. N... 919, April 11 1SS7. Aniiiml Subscliplion, $30.00 



READIANA 



CHARLES READE 

AiTEicK OF "ORIFFI'IH GAUNT." "FOUL 
PLAY, ' l/ic. En. 



I.iittre.i Ml llif Tost Offir-e, X. Y., as swmiii-rl.iss iiiatter. 
Ci'|>ynj;hl, 1X84, by Jons W. L<>\ ell Cu. 



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Seventeen thonsand families in the City of New York alone are now wearins? 
them dail;; Every Man and Women, well or ill, should daily 
, . . wear either the Corset or BeU. 

CdK^oVrSETS ARE DOUBLE STITCHED AND WILL NOT RIP. 

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R I C ASSOCIA- 



THF. CELEBRATED DR. W. A. 
Hammond, of New York, formerly 
Surgeon-General of the U. S. Army, 
lately lectured upon this subject, and 
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TIOK. 

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I suffered severely from back 
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I'have an invalid sis- 
ter who had not been 
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She has worn Dr. 
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weeks, and is now 
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and sit up most ot 
the time. 

melva J. Doe. 



Newark. N. Y. 
Dr. Scott's Electric Corsets 
have entirely cured me of 



Chambersbiirg, Pa. 
I found lir. Scott's Electric Cor- 
find them in you t 'dry goods ?^** possessed miraculous power 
store, remit to us Jirect. We '"funulating and invigorating my 

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Dr. Scott's Electric Hair Brushes, $1.00, S1.'>0, $2.00, $2. .50, $?..00; Flesh 

Brushes, $.'5.00 : Dr. Scott's Electric Tooth Brushes, 50 cents ; Insoles, 

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The Best Utterance 



— ON THE — 



LABOR QUESTION. 



" Solutions Sociales," translated by Marie Howland. 



' ' Social Solutions, " a semi-monthly pamphlet, containing each 
a twelfth part of an admirable English translation of M. Godin's state- 
ment of the course of study which led him to conceive the Social 
Palace at Guise, France. There is no question that this publication 
makes an era in the growth of the labor question. It should serve as 
the manual for organized labor in its present contest? since its teachings 
will as surely lead to the destruction of the wages system as the aboli- 
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articles of importance, besides the portion of the translation. Many 
of these are translated from M. Godin's contributions to the socialistic 
propaganda in Europe. 

Published as regular issues of the "Loyell Library," by the 
John W. Lovell Company, 14 and 16 Vesey Street, New York, N. Y., 
at ten cents per number ; the subscription of $1.00 secures the de- 
livery of the complete series. 



JOHN W. LOVELI, COMPANY, 
t4 and 16 Vesey Street. NEW YQUK* 



EEADIANA 



CIIAP.LES KEADE 
It 

AUTHOR OF "FOUL PLAV," "VERY HARD CASH," ETC., ETC. 



NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 
14 AND 16 Vesey Stkeet 






CHARLES READE'S WORKS 

CONTAINED IN LOVELL'S LIBRARY. 



FKICKi 



28 Singleheart and Doubleface, .... • IOC 
415 A Perilous Secret, .....,• 20C. 

759 Foul Play, 20c 



READIANA: 

COMMENTS ON CURRENT EVENTS. 



BY CHARLES READE. 



THE BOX TUNNEL. 

A FACT. 

The 10.15 train glided from Paddington, May 7, 1847. In the 
left compartment of a certain first- class carriage were four pas- 
sengers; of these, two were worth description. The lady had a 
smooth, white delicate brow, strongly marked eyebrows, long 
lashes, eyes that seeaied to change color, and a good-sized de- 
licious mouth, with teeth as wliite as milk. A man could not 
see her nose for her eyes and mouth; her own sex could and 
would have told us some nonsense about it. Sue wore an un- 
pretending grayish dress, buttoned to the tiiroat, with lozenge- 
shaped buttons, and a Scotch shawl that agreeably evaded the 
responsibility of color. She was like a duck, so tight her plain 
feathers fittf^d her; and there she sat, smooth, snug and delicious, 
with a book in her hand and a soupcon of her snowy wrist just 
visible as slie held it. Her opposite neighbor was what I call a 
good style of uian — the more to his credit, since he belonged to a 
corporation, that frequently turns out the worst imaginable 
style of y(juag man. He was a cavalry officer, aged twenty-five. 
He had a mustache, but not a repulsive one; not one of those 
sub-nasal pig-tails, on which soup is suspended like dew on a 
shrub; it was short, thick, and black as a coal. His teeth had 
not yet been turned by tobacco smoke to the color of tobacco 
juice, his clothes did not stick to nor hang on him, they sat on 
him; he had an engaging smile, and, what I like the dog for, his 
vanity, which was inordinate, was in its proper place, his heart, 
not in his face, jostling mine and other people's, who have none: 
— in a word, he was what one oftener hears of than meets, a 
young gentleman. He was conversing, in an animated whisper, 
with a companion, a fellow-officer — they were talking about, 
what it is far better not to do, women. Our friend clearly did 
not wish to be overheard, for he cast, ever and anon, ... furtive 
glance at liis fai" vis-a-vin find lowered his voice. She seemed 
completely absorbeu iii Le/ book, and that foassured him. At 



8 EEADIANA. 

last the two soldiers came down to a whisper, and in that whis- 
per (the truth must be told) the one who got down at Slough, 
and. was lost to posterity, bet ten pounds to three, that he, who 
was going down with us to Bath and immortality, would not 
kiss either of the ladies opposite upon the road. " Done! Done!" 
Now I am sorry a man I have hitherto praised should have lent 
himself, even in a whisper, to such a speculation: " but nobody 
is wise at all hours," not even when the clock is striking five-and 
twenty; and you are to consider his profession, his good looks, 
and the temptation — ten to three. 

After Slough the party was reduced to three ; at Twyford one 
lady dropped her handkerchief ; Captain Dolignan fell on it like 
a tiger and returned it like a lamb ; two or three words were 
interchanged on that occasion. At Reading the Marlborough of 
our tale made one of the safe investments of that day ; he 
bought a Times and a Punch ; the latter was full of steel-pen 
thrusts and wood-eufs. Valor and beauty deigned to laugh at 
some inflated humbug or other punctured by Punch. Now 
laughing together thaws our human ice ; long before Swindon 
it was a talking match — at Swindon who so devoted aa Captain 
Dolignan — he handed them out — he souped them — he tough- 
chickened them — he brandied and cochinealed* one, and he 
brandied and burnt-sugared the other ; on their return to the 
carriage one lady passed into the inner compartment to inspect 
a certain gentleman's seat on that side the line. 

Reader, had it been you or I, the beauty would have been the 
deserter, the average one would have stayed with us till all was 
blue, ourselves included ; not more surely does our slice of 
bread and butter, when it escapes from our hand, revolve it ever 
so often, alight face downward on the carpet. But this was a 
bit of a fop, Adonis, dragoon — so Venus remained in tete-a-tete 
with him. You have seen a dog meet an unknown female of 
his species : how handsome, how erupresse, how expressive he 
becomes ; such was Dolignan after Swindon, and, to do the do^ 
justice, he got handsomer and handsomer ; and you have seen a 
cat conscious of approaching cream — such was Miss Haythorn ; 
she became demurer and demurer ; presently our captain looked 
out of window and laughed : this elicited an inquiring look 
from Miss Haythorn. 

" We are only a mile from the Box Tunnel." 

" Do you always laugh a mile from the Box Tunnel ?" said the 
lady. 

" Invariably." 

"What for?" 

"Why! -hem! — it is a gentleman's joke." 

" O, I don't mind its being silly, if it makes me laugh." Cap- 
tain DoligTian, thus encouraged, recounted to Miss Haythorn 
the following: "A lady and her husband sat together going 
through tlie Box Tunnel — there was one gentleman opposite; it 
was pitch dark; after the tunnel the lady said, ' George, how ab- 

* This is supposed to allude to two decoctions called port and sherry 
and imagined by one earthly nation to partake of a vinous nature. 



READIANA. 3 

surd of you to salute me going through the tunnel!" — ' I did no 
such thing.' — ' You didn't ?' — ' No! why ?' — ' Why, because some- 
how I thought you did.' " Here Captain Dolignan lauglied. and 
endeavored to lead his companion to laugh, but it was not to be 
done. The train entered the tunnel. 

Miss Haythorn. " Ah!" 

Dolignan. " What is the matter?" 

Miss Haythorn. " I am frightened." 

Dolignan {vaovmg to her side). "Pray do not be alarmed I 
am near you." 

Miss Haythorn. " You are near me, very near me indeed, 
Captain Dolignan." 

Dolignan. " You know my name!" 

Miss Haythorn. " I heard your friend mention it. I wish we 
were out of this dark place." 

Dolignan. " I could be content to spend hours here, reassur- 
ing you, sweet lady." 

Miss Haythorn. "Nonsense I" 

Dolignan. " Pweep!" (Grave reader, do not put your lips to 
the cheek of the next pretty creature you meet, or you will un- 
derstand what this means). 

Miss HaythoTcn. " Ee! Eel Ee!" 

Friend. " What is the matter?" 

Miss Haythorn. " Open the door! — open the door!" 

The door was opened. There was a sound of hurried whispers, 
th*e door was shut and thebhnd pulled down with hostile sharp- 
ness. Miss Haythorn's scream lost part of its effect because the 
t'Dgine whistled forty thousand murders at the same moment: 
and fictitious grief makes itself heard when real cannot. 

Between the tunnel and Bath our young friend had time to 
ask himself whether his conduct iiad been marked by that deli- 
cate reserve which is supposed to distinguish the perfect gentle- 
man. 

With a long face, real or feigned, he held open the door — his 
late friends attempted to escape on the other side — impossible! 
they must pass him. She whom he had insulted (Latin for 
kissed) deposited somewhere at bis foot a look of gentle blushing 
reproach: the other, whom he had not insulted, darted red-hot 
daggers at him from her eyes, and so they parted. 

It was perhaps fortunate for Dolignan that he had the grace 
to be friends with Major Hoskyns of bis regiment, a veteran 
laughed at by the youngsters, for the major was too apt' to look 
coldly upon billiard balls and cigars; he had seen cannon balls 
and linstocks. He had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good 
bit of the mess-room poker, but with it some sort of moral 
poker, which made it as impossible for Major Hoskyns to de- 
scend to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to brush his owu 
trousers below the knee. 

Captain Dolignan told this gentleman bis story in gleeful ac- 
cents, but Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly an- 
svrered that he had known a man to lose his life for the same 
thing. " ihat is nothing," continued the major, " but unfortu- 
nately^ he deserved to lose it," 



4 READIANA. 

At this the blood mounted to the younger man's temples, and 
his senior added: " I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I pre- 
sume, are twenty-one I" 

"Twenty -five." 

" That is much the same thing. Will you be advised by me ?" 

" If you will advise me." 

"Speak to no one of this, and send White the £3 that he may 
think you have lost the bet.-.' 

"That is hard when I won it." 

"Do it for all tliat, sir." 

Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this 
dragon capable of a blush did this virtuous action, albeit with vio- 
lent reluctance ; and it was his firfet damper. A week after these 
events, he was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious dis- 
content which belongs to us amiable English. He was looking, 
in vain, for a lady, equal in personal attraction to the idea he 
had formed of George Dolignan as a man, when suddenly there 
glided past him a most delightful vision, a lady whose beauty 
and symmetry took him by the eyes. Another look: "It cant 
be ! — Yes, it is !'' Miss Haytbom — (not that he knew her namel) 
— but what an apotheosis 1 

The duck had become a pea-hen — radiant, dazzling ; she look- 
ed twice as beautiful and almost twice as large as before. H« 
lost sight of her. He found her again. She was so lovely she 
made him ill — and he, alone, must not dance with her, nor 
speak to her. If he had been content to begin her acquiiintance 
in the usual way. it might have ende3 in kissing, but having 
begun with kissing it must end in nothing. As she danced, 
sparks of beauty fell from her on all around, but him — she did 
not see him ; it was clear she never would see him. One gentle- 
man was particularly assiduous ; she smiled on bis aFsiduity ; 
he was ugly, but she smiled on him. Dolignan was surprised at 
his success, his ill taste, his ugliness, his impertinence. Dolig- 
nan at last found himseK injured. "Who was this man ? and 
what right had he to go on so? He had never kissed her, I sup- 
pose," said Dolly. Dolignan could not prove it, but he felt that, 
somehow, the rights of property were invaded. He went home 
and dreamed of Miss Havthorn, and hated all the ugly success- 
ful, * He spent a fortnight trying to find out who this beauty 
was — he never could encounter her again. At last he heard of 
her in this way : a lawyer's clerk paid him a visit and com- 
menced a little action against him, in the name of Miss Hay- 
thorn, for insulting her in a railway train. 

The young gentleman was shocked; endeavored to soften the 
lawyer's clerk; that machine did not thoroughly compre'^end the 
meaning of the term. The lady's name, however, was at last re- 
•Tealed by this untoward incident; from her name to her address 
was but a short step, and the same day our crestfallen hero lay 
in wait at her door, and many a succeeding day, without effect. 

* When our successful rival is ugly the blow is doubly severe, crush- 
ing—we fall by bludgeon: we who thought the keenest rapier nujht per- 
chance thrust at us in vain, 



BEADIANA. 6 

But one fine afternoon she issued forth quite naturall}^ as if she 
did it every day, and walked briskh- on the nearest parade. 
Dohgnau did t!ie same, he met and passed her many times on 
the parade, aud searched for pity in her eyes, but found neither 
look, nor recognition, nor any other sentiment; for all this she 
walked and walked, till all the ether promenaders were tired and 
gone — then her culprit summoned resolution, and taking off his 
hat, with a voice tremulous for the iirst time, besought permis- 
sion to address her. She stopped, blushed, and neitiier acknowl- 
edged nor disowned his acquaintance. He blushed, stammered 
out how ashamed he was, how he deserved to be punished, how 
he was punished, how little she knew how unhappy he was: and 
concluded by begging her not to let all the world know the dis- 
grace of a man who was already mortified enough by the loss of 
her acquaiutnnce. She asked an explanation; he told her of the 
action that had been commenced in her name; she gently 
slirugged her shoulders, and said, " How stupid they are." Em- 
boldened by this, he begged to know whether or not a life of dis- 
tant, unpretending devotion would, after a lapse of years, erase 
the memory of his madneiss — his crime ? 

"She did not know." 

" She must now bid him adieu, as she had some preparations to 
make for a ball in the Crescent, where everybody was to be." 
They parted, and Dolignan determined to be at the ball where 
everybody was to be. He was there, and after some time he 
obtained an introduction to Miss Havthorn, and he danced with 
lier. Her manner was gracious. With the wonderful tact of 
her sex, she ficemed to have commenced the acquaintance that 
evening. That night, for the first time, Dolignan was in love. 
I will spare the reader all a lover's arts, by which he succeeded 
in dining where she dined, in dancing where she danced, in 
overtaking her by accident wlien she rode. His devotion fol- 
lowed her even to clmrch, where our dragoon was rewarded by 
learnmg there is a world where tbev neither polk nor smoke — 
the two capital abominations of this one. 

He made acquaintance «ith her uncle, who liked him. and he 
saw at last, with joy, that her eye loved to dwell upon him, 
wlien she thought he did not observe her. 

It was three months after the Box Tunnel that Captain Dolig- 
nan called one dav upon Captain Haythorn, R. N., whom he had 
met twice in his life, and s]i2,htly propitiated by resolutely listen- 
ing to a cutting-out expedition; he called, and in the usual way, 
asked permission to pay his addresses to his daughter. The 
worthy Captain straightway began doing Quarter-Deck, when 
suddenly he was summoned from the apartment by a mysterious 
message. On his return he announced, with a total change of 
voice, that " it was all right, and his vi itor might run alongside 
as soon as he chose." My reader has divined the truth; this 
nautical commander, temble to the foe, was in complete and 
happy subjugation to his daughter, our heroine. 

As he was taking leave, Dolignan saw his divinity glide into 
the drawing-room. He followed her, observed a sweet con- 
sciousness which encouraged him; that consciousness deepened 



6 READIANA. 

into confusion — she tried to laugh, she cried instead, and tVien 
she srailed again; and when he kissed her at the door, it was 
" George," and "Marian," instead of Captain this, and Miss the 
other. A reasonable time after this (for my tale is merciful and 
skips formalties and torturing delays) tliese two were very happy 
— they were once more upon the railroad, going to enjoy the 
honeymoon all by themselves. Marian Dolignan was dressed 
just as before — duck-like, and delicious; all bright except her 
clotlies; but George sat beside hej- this time instead of opposite; 
and she drank him in gently from under her long eye-lashes. 
" Marian," said George, " married people should tell each other 
ail. Will you ever forgive me if I own to you — no " 

"Yes! yes!" 

"Well, then! you remember Box Tunnel" (this was the first 
allusion lie had ventured to it), " I am ashamed to say ] hnd bet 
£3 to £10 with White, I would kiss one of you two ladies;" and 
George, pathetic externally, chuckled within. 

" I know that, George; I overheard you," was the demure reply. 

" O, you overheard me? — impossible." 

"And did you not hear me whisper to my companion? I 
made a bet with her." 

"You made a bet? — how singular! What was it?" 

" Only a pair of gloves, George." 

" Yes, I know, but what about?" 

"That, if you did, you should be my husband, dearest." 

"Oh! — but stay: then you could not have been so very angry 
with me, love; why, dearest, then who brought that action 
against me?" 

Mrs. Dolignan looked down. 

"I ^7as afraid you were forgetting me. George, you will 
never forgive me ?" 

" Sweet angel! — why, thei'e is the Box Tunnel." 

Now reader — fie! — no! no such thing! You can't expect to be 
indulged in this way every time we come to a dark place. Be- 
sides, it is not the thing. Consider two sensible married people 
— no such phenomenon, I assure you, took place; no scream 
issued in hopeless rivalry of the engine — this time. 



A BRAVE WOMAN. 

The public itches to hear what people of rank and reputation 
do and say, however trivial. We defer to this taste: ^nd that 
gives us a right to gratify our own now and then, by presenting 
what may be called the reverse picture, the remarkable acts, oi 
sufferings, or qualities, of persons unknown to society, because 
society is a clique; and to fame, because fame is partial. 

In this spirit we shall tell our readers a few facts alaout a per- 
son we are not likely to misjudge, for we do not know her even 
by sight. 

31st of August, 1878, a train left Margate for London by the 
Chatham and Dover line. At Sittingbourne the pointsman 



READIANA, 7 

kimed the poiuts the wrong way, and the train dashed into a 
shunted train at full speed. The engine, tender, and leading 
carriages were crushed together and piled ovei* one another. The 
nearest passengers were chatting merrily one moment, and dead, 
dying, or mutilated, the next. 

Nearest the engine was a third-clafs carnage, and in its furth- 
est compartment sat a Mrs. Freeland, who in her youth had led 
an adventurous life in the colonies, but now in middle age 
had returned to mother England for peace and quiet. She felt 
a crash and heard a hissiug, and for one moment saw the ten- 
der bursting through the compartments toward her; then she 
was hurled down upon her face with some awful weight upon 
her, and wedged immovable iu a debris of fractured iron, splin- 
tered wood, shattered glass and mutilated bodies. 

In a few minutes people ran to help, but in that excited state 
Tvhich sometimes aggravates these dire calamities. First they 
were for dragging her out by force; but she was self-possessed, 
and said; "Pray, be calm, and don't attempt it; I am fast by 
the legs, and a great weight on my back." 

Then they were for breaking into the carriage from above; but 
she called to them, "Please don't do that — the roof is broken, 
and you don't know what you may bring down upon us." 

Thus advised by the person most likely to lose her head, one 
•would think, they effected an entrance at the sides. Tliey re- 
moved from her back an iron wheel and a dead body, and they 
:savved round her jammed and lacerated limbs, and at last with 
difficulty carried out a lady with her boots torn and filled with 
blood, her clothes in ribbons, her face pouring blood, her back 
apparently broken, and her right leg furrowed all down to the 
very foot with a gaping wound, that laid bare the sinews, be- 
sides numberless contusions and smaller injuries. They laid her 
on a mat upon the platform, and there she remained, refusing 
many offers of brandy, and waiting for a surgeon. 

None came for a long time and benevolent Nature, so-called, 
sent a heavy rain. At last, in three quarters of an hour, surgeons 
arrived, and one of them removed her on her mat into a shed, 
that let in only part of the rain. He found her spine injured, 
took a double handful of splinters, wood, and glass, out of her 
head and face, and then examined her leg. He looked aghast 
at the awful furrow. The sufferer said quietly, " I should like 
a stitch or two put into that." The surgeon looked at her in 
amazement. " Can you bear it?" She said: *' I think so." 

He said she had better fortify herself with a little brandy, 
She objected to that as useless. But he insisted, and the awful 
furrow was stitched up in silk. This done he told her she had 
better be removed to the Infirmary at Chatham, 

"Army surgeons?" said she. " No, thank you. I shall go to 
a London hospital." 

Being immovable in this resolution, she had to wait three 
hours for a train. 

At last she was sent up to London, lying upon a mat on the 
floor of a carriage, hashed, aa we have described, and soaked 
with rain. From the London station she was conveyed on a 



8 READIANA. 

stretcher to St. George's Hospital. There they discovered many 
grave injuries, admired her for her courage and wisdom in hav- 
ing her wounded leg sewn up at once, but toLl her with regret 
that to be effectual it must be secured with silver points, and 
that without delay. 

''Tery well." said she, J)atiently; "but give me chloroform, 
for I am worn out." 

The surgeon said: " If you cotdd endure it without chloroform 
it would be better." He saw she had the courage of ten men. 

" Well," said she. " let me have somebody's hand to hold, and 
I will try to bear it." 

A sympathizing young surgeon gave this brave woman his 
hand: and she bore to have the siJk threads removed, and thirty 
little silver skewers passed and repassed through her quivering 
flesh, sixty wounds to patch up one. It afterward transpired 
that the good surgeon was only reserving chloroform for the 
amputation he thought must foUow, having little hope of saving 
such a leg. 

Whatever charity and science — ^united in our hospitals, though 
disunited in those dark hells where God's innocent creatures are 
cut up alive out of curiosity — could do, was done for her at St. 
George's Hospital; the wounded leg was saved, and in three 
weeks the patient was carried home. But the di^eper injuries 
seemed to get worse. Slie lay six montlis on her back, and afttr 
that was lame and broken and aching from head to foot for 
nearly a year. As soon as she could crawl about she busied her- 
self in relieving the sick and the poor, according to her means. 

Fifteen months after the railway accident, a new and myster- 
ious injury began to show itself; severe internal pains, accom- 
panied with wasting, which was quite a new feature intbecase. 
This brought her to death's door after all. 

But, when faint hopes were entertained of her recovery, the 
malady declared itself — an abscess in the intestines. It broke, 
and left the sufferer prostrate, but out of danger. 

Unfortunately, in about a month another formed, and laid her 
low again, until it gave way like its predeces ior. And that has 
now been her life for months; constantly growing these agoniz- 
ing things, of which a single one is generally fatal. 

In one of her short intervals of peace a friend of hers, Major 
Mercier, represented to her the merits and the difficulties of a 
certain hospital for diseases of the skin. Instantly this brave 
woman sets to work and lives for other afflicted persons. She 
fights the good fight, talks, writes, persuades, insists, obtains the 
public support of five duchesses, five marchionesses, thirty-two 
countesses, and a hundred ladies of rank, and also of many cele- 
brated characters; obtains subscriptions, organizes a grand 
bazaar, etc., for tins woi'thy object. 

Now, as a general rule, permanent invalids fall into egotism; 
but here is a lady, not only an invalid, but a sufferer, and indeed, 
knocked down by suffering half her time; yet with undaunted 
heart, and charitable, unselfish soul, she struggles and works for 
others, whose maladies are after all much lighter than her own . 

Ought so much misfortune and merit to receive no public 



READIANA. 9 

notice ? Ought so rare a union of male fortitude and womanly 
pity to suffer and relieve without a word of praise ? Why to us, 
who judge by things, not names, this seems some heroic figure 
strayed out of Antiquity into an age of little men and women, 
who howl at the scratch of a pin. 

Such a character deserves to be sung by some Christian poet; 
but as poetasters are many and poets are few, Mrs. Eosa Free- 
land, brave, Buffering and charitable, is chronicled in the prose of 
" Fact." 



A BAD FALL. 

TO THE EDITOR OF "FACT." 

Sm, — I sometimes get provoked with the British workman — 
and say so. He comes into my house to do a day's work, and 
goes out again to fetch the tool he knew be should want, and 
does not come back till after breakfast. Then I think I have got 
him. But no; he sharpens his tools and goes out for a whet. 
Even when he is at work he is always going into the kitchen for 
hot #vater, or a hot coal, or the loan of a pair of tongs, or some 
other blind. My maids, who, before he came, were all industry 
and mock modesty, throw both of these virtures out of the win- 
dow, and are after him on the roof, when he is not after them in 
the kitchen. They lose tlieir heads entirely, and are not worth 
their salt, far less their wages, till he is gone, and that is always 
a terribly long time, considering how little he has to do. For 
these reasons, and because, whenever he has been out on my roof 
the rain comes in next heavy shower, I liave permitted myself 
to call him in print " the curse of families." 

Then he strikes, and combines, and speechifies, and calls the 
capital that feeds him his enemy; and sometimes fights with the 
capital of a thousand against the capital of a single master, and 
overpowers it, yet calls that a fight of labor against capital. 
Then he demands short time, which generally means more time 
to drink in, and higher wages, which often means more money 
to drink with. Thereupon I lose my temper, rush into print, and 
call the British workman the British talk-man and the British 
drink-man. 

But it must be owned all this is rather narrow and shallow, 
" Where there's a multitude there's a mixture," and a private 
gentleman in my position does not really know the mass of the 
workmen and their invaluable qualities. 

One thing is notorious — that in their bargains with capital 
they are very lenient in one respect, they charge very little for 
their lives; yet they shorten them in many trades, and lose them 
right away in some. 

Even I, who have been hard on them in some things, have al- 
ready pointed out that instead of labor and capital the trades 
ought to speechify on life, labor and capital; and dwell more 
upon their risks, as a fit subject of remuneration, than their 
professed advocates have done. 

Is it not a sad thing to reflect, when you see the ecaflfolding 



10 headiana. 

prepared for some great building to be erected either for pious 
or mundane purposes that out of those employed in erecting it 
some are sure to be killed? 

All this prolixity is to usher in a simple fact, which interests 
me more than the petty proceedings of exalted personages, and 
their "migrations from the blue bed to the brown;" and some 
of your readers are sure to be of my mind. 

The Princess'^ Theater, Oxford Street, is being reconstructed. 
The walls, far more substantial than they build nowadays, are 
to stand, but the old interior is demolished, and the roof height 
ened. 

Sullivan, a young carpenter, was at work with his fellows on 
a stage properly secured. They wanted some ropes that lay on 
another stage, and sent him for them. Between the stages was 
a plank, which he naturally thought, had been laid to walk on. 
He stepped on it — it was only a half-inch board. It snapped 
under his weight like a can*ot, and be fell through in a mo- 
ment. 

He caught at a projection, but merely tore his fingers, and 
descended into space with fearful velocity. 

The height was fifty feet — measxwed. • 

The thing he fell on was a hard board, lying on hard ground. 
Those who saw him fall, and heard liis one cry of horror, had no 
liope of taking up anything from the ground below but a bat- 
tered corpse with broken back, fractured skull, and shattered 
ribs. 

Thirty-five feet below the place he fell from, a strong bolt, 
about an inch in diameter and four feet long, protruded from the 
wall almost at right angles, but with a slight declension down- 
ward. 

The outer end of this protruding iron just caught Sullivan by 
the seat, ripped up his clothes, and tore his back, and partly 
broke his fall. Nevertheless, such was its violence that he 
bounded up from the board he eventually fell upon, and was 
found all in a heap in a hollow place close by, senseless, and al- 
most pulseless. 

Hy was taken to the Middlesex Hospital. There he came to 
his senses and his trouble. His pulse was soon over 100. His 
temperature 108— a very alarming feature. This, however, has 
subsided, and they have got his pulse to 98, but he cannot eat; 
his eyes cannot bear the light. There are one or more severe 
wounds upon his back parts, and much reason to fear injury to 
the spinal column. He is in danger; and, if he survives, which 
I think very possible, it is to be feared he will never be able to 
walk and work again. These, sir. are the dire realities of life; 
and very fit to be admitted into your graver columns. Here is 
a sad fact and a curious fact. 

Sullivan was a handsome young fellow, just beginning the 
world. In a moment there he lies a cripple and a wreck, and 
that is a sad thing for any feeling heart to think of. The bolt 
which saved him from immediate death is a curious fact. It ia 
still to be seen dangling from the wall aa it did when it ripped 



headiana. 11 

up the workman's clothes, furrowed his back, and broke bis 
fall. 

Will it prove his friend or his enemy, that piece of iroa? The 
enemy of his body if it makes him a cripple instead of a corpse; 
but a friend of his soul if he reads his own story right; where- 
fore I hope some servant of God will go to his bedside with the 
true balm of Crilead, 

I am, sir, 

Yours faithfully, 

Charles Reade. 



PERSEVEEANCE. 

On a certain day in the year 1819, Mr. Chitty, an attorney in 
Shaftesbury, was leaving his office for the day, when he was met 
at the door by a respectable woman and a cliubby-faced boy with 
a bright eye. He knew the woman slightly — a widow that kept a 
small stationer's shop in the town. 

She opened her business at once. 

" Oh. Mr. Chitty, I have brought you my Robert; he gives me 
no peace; his heart is so set on being in a lawyer's office. But 
there, I have not got the money to apprentice him. Only we 
thought perhaps you could find some place or other for him, if it 
was ever so small." Then she broke off and looked appealingly, 
and the boy's cheeks and eyes were fired with expectation. 

Most country towns at that time possessed two solicitors, who 
might be called types, the old established man, whose firm for 
generations had done the pacific and luci-ative business — wills, 
settlements, partnerships, mortgages, etc. — and the sharp prac- 
titioner, who was the abler of the two at litigation, and had to 
shake the plum tree instead of sitting under it and opening his 
mouth for the windfalls. Mr. Chitty was No. 2. 

But these sharp practitioners are often very good-natured; and 
so, looking at the pleading widow and the beaming boy, he felt 
disposed to oblige them, and rather sorry lie could not. He said 
his was a small office, and he had no clerk's place vacant; " and, 
indeed, if I had, he is too young; why, he is a mere childl" 

" 1 am twelve next so-and-so," said the boy, giving the month 
and the day. 

"You don't look it, then," said Mr. Chitty incredulously. 

"Indeed, but he is, sir," said the widow; "he never looked 
his age, and writes a beautiful hand." 

" But I tell you I have no vacancy," said Mr. Chitty, turning 
dogged. 

" Well, thank you, sir, all the same." said the widow, with 
the patience of her sex. " Come, Robert, we mustn't detain the 
gentleman." 

So they turned away with disappointment marked on their 
faces, the boy's especially. 

Then Mr. Chittj^ said in a hesitating way: "To be sure, there 
is a vacancy, but ib^is not the sort of thing for you." 



19 BEADIANA. 

" What is it, sir, if you please ?" asked the widow. 

" Well, we want an office boy." 

" An office boy I What do you say, Robert ? I suppose it is a 
beginning, sir. What will he have to do ?" 

" Why, sweep the office, run errands, oarry papers — and that 
is not what he is after. Look at him; he has got that eye of his 
fixed on a counselor's wig, you may depend; and sweeping a 
country attorney's office is not the steppuig-stone to that." He 
added warily, "at least there is no precedent reported." 

"La! sir," said the widow, " he only wants to turn an honest 
penny, and be among l;jw-papers." 

" Ay, ay, to write 'em and sell 'em, but not to dust 'eml'' 

" For that matter, sir, I believe he'd rather be the dust itself 
in your office than bide at home with me." Here she turned 
angry with her offspring for half a moment. 

"And so I would," said young master stoutly indorsing his 
mother's hyperbole very boldly, though his own mind was not of 
that kind which originates metaphors, similes, and engines of 
inaccuracy in general. 

" Theui say no more," observed Mr. Chitty; " only mind, it is 
half a crown a week — tliat is all." 

The terms were accepted, and Master Robert entered on his 
humble duties^ He was steady, persevering, and pushing; in 
less than too years he got promoted to be a copying clerk. From 
this, in due course, he became a superior clerk. He studied, 

{)ushed and' persevered, till at last he became a fair practical 
awyer, and Mr. Chitty's head clerk. And so much for perse- 
verence. 

He remained some years in this position, trusted by his em- 
ployer, and respected, too; for besides his special gifts as a law- 
clerk, he was strict m morals, and religious without parade. 

In those days country attorneys could not fly to the metrop- 
olis and back to dinner. They relied much on London attorneys, 
their agents. Lavvyer Chitty's agent was Mr. Bishop, a judge's 
clerk ; but in those days a judge's clerk had an insufficient sti- 
pend, and was allowed to eke it out by private practice. Mr. 
Bishop was agent to several country attorneys. Well, Chitty 
had a heavy case coming on at the assizes, and asked Bishop to 
come down for once in a way and help him in person. Bishop 
did so, and in working the case was delighted with Chitty's man- 
aging clerk. Before leaving he said he sadly wanted a manag- 
ing clerk he could rely on. Would Mr. Chitty oblige him and 
part with this young man ? 

Chitty made rather a wry face, and said that young man was 
a pearl. " I don't know what I shall do without him; why, he is 
my alter ego.''' 

However, he ended by saying, generously, that he would not 
stand in the young man's way. Then they had the clerk in, and 
put the question to him. 

"Sir," he said, "it is the ambition of my heart to go to 
London." 

Twenty-four hours after that, our hiimble hero was installed 
Jn Mr. Bishop's office, directing a large business in town and 



READUNA. 13 

country. He filled that situation for many years, and got to be 
well known in the legal profession. A brother of mine, who for 
years was one of a firm of solicitors in Lincoln's- Inn Fields, 
remembers him well at this period; and to have met him some- 
times in his own cliambers, and sometimes in Judge's Cham- 
bers; my brother says he could not help noticing hitn, for he 
bristled with intelligence, and knew a deal of law, though he 
looked a boy. 

The best of the joke is that this clerk afterward turned out 
to be four years older than that solicitor who took him for a 
boy. 

He was now up amongst books as well as lawyers, and studied 
closely tlie principles of law whilst the practice was sljarpening 
him. He was much in the courts, and every case there cited in 
argument or judgment he hunted out in the books, aud digested 
it, together with its application in practice by tlie Uving judge, 
who had quoted, received, or evaded it. He was a Baptist, and 
lodged with a Baptist minister and his two daughters. He fell 
in love with one of them, proposed to her, and was accepted. 
The couple were married without pomp, and after 1 he ceremony 
the good minister took them aside, and said, " I have only £200 
in the world; I have saved it a little at a time, for my two daugh- 
ters. Here is your share, my children. Then he gave his 
daughter £100, and she handed it to the bridegroom on the spot. 
The good minister smiled approval and tbey sat down to what 
fine folk call breakfast, but tiiey called dinner, and it was. 

After dinner and the usual ceremonies, the bridegroom rose 
and surprised them a little. He said, " I am very sorry to leave 
you, but I have a particular business to attend t(>; it will take 
me just one hour." 

Of course tliere was a look or two interchanged, especially by 
every female there present; but the confidence in him was too 
great to be disturbed ; and this was his first eccentricity. 

He left them, went to Gray's Inn, put down his name as a 
student for the Bar; paid away his wife's dowry in fees, and re- 
turned within the hour. 

Next day the married clerk was at the office, as usual, and 
entered on a twofold life He worked as a clerk till five, dined 
in the HaU of Gray's Inn as a sucking barrister; and studied 
hard at night. This was followed by a still stronger example of 
duplicate existence, and one without a parallel in my reading 
and experience— he became a writer and produced a master- 
piece, which, as regarded the practice of our courts, became at 
once the manual of attorneys, counsel, and judges. 

The author, though his book was entitled •' practice," showed 
some quaUties of a jurist, and corrected soberly but firmly un- 
scientific legislature and judicial blunders. 

So here was a student of Gray's Inn, supposed to be picking up 
in that Inn a small smattering of law, yet. to diversify his crude 
studies, instructing mature counsel and correcting the judges 
themselves, at whose chambers he attended aaily, cap in hand, 
as an attorney's clerk. There's an intellectual hotch-potch for 
you I All this did not in his Inn qualify him to be a barrister ; 



u headiana. 

but years and dinners did. After some weary years he took the 
oaths at Westminster, and vacated by that act bis place in 
Bishop's offiee; and was a pauper — for an afternoon. 

But work, that has been lung and tediously prepared, can be 
executed quickly; and adverse circumstances, when Persever- 
ance conquers them, turn round and become allies. 

The ex-clerk and young barrister had plowed and sowed with 
such pains and labor, that he reaped with comparatiA'e ease. 
Half the mauaging clerks in London knew him and believed in 
him. Tliey had the ears of their employers, and brought him 
pleadings to draw and motions to make. His book, too, brought 
him clients, and he was soon in full career as a junior counsel 
and special pleader. Senior counsel, too, found tliat they could 
rely upon his zeal, accuracy, and learning. They began to re- 
quest that he might be retained with tkem in difficult cases, and 
he became first junior counsel at the bar; and so much for 
Perseverance. 

Time rolled its ceaseless course, and a silk gown was at his dis- 
posal. Now, a popular junior counsel cannot always afford to 
take silk, as they call it. Indeed, if he is learned, but not elo- 
quent, he may ruin himself by the change. But the remarkable 
man, whose career I am epitomizing, did not hesitate; he still 
pushed onward, and so cne mornmg the Lord Chancellor sat for 
an hour in the Queen's Bench, and Mr. Robert Lush was ap- 
pointed one of Her Majesty's Counsel learned in the Law, and 
then and there, by the Chancellor's invitation, stepped out from 
among the juniors and took his seat within the Bar. So much 
for Perseverance. 

From this point the outline of his career is known to every- 
body. He was appointed in 1865 one of the Judges of the Queen's 
Bench, and, after sitting in that court some years, was promoted 
to be a Lord Justice of Appeal. 

A few days ago he died, lamented and revered by the legal 

f)rofe3sion, which is very critical, and does not bestow its respect 
ightly. 

I knew him only as Queen's Counsel. I had him against me 
once, but oftener for me, because my brother thought him even 
then the best lawyer and the most zealous at the Bar, and always 
retained him if he could. During the pei'iod I knew him person- 
ally Mr. Lush had still a plump, unwrinkled face, and a singu- 
larly bright eye. His voice was full, mellow, and penetrating; 
it filled the court without apparent effort, and accorded well 
with his style of eloquenr^e, which was what Cicero calls the 
temperatuvi genus loquendi. 

Reasoning carried to perfection is one of the fine arts; an argu- 
ment by Lush enchained the ear and charmed tJie understand- 
ing. He began at the beginning, and eacli succeeding topic was 
articulated and disposed of, and succeeded by its right successor, 
in language so fit and order so bicid, that he rooted and grew 
conviction in the mind. Tantum series nexuraque pollent. 

I never heard him at Nisi Prius, but should think he could do 
nothing ill, yet would be greater at convincing judges than at 
persuading juries right or \^rong; for at this pastime he would 



BEADIANA. 15 

have to escape from the force of his o\'"n understanding, whereas 
I have known counsel blatant and admired, whom Nature and 
flippant fluency had secured against that difficulty. 

He was affable to clients, and I had more than one conversa- 
tion with him, very interesting to me. But to intrude these 
would be egotistical, and disturb the just proportions of this 
short notice. I hope some lawyer, who knew him well as a 
counsel and judge, will give us his distinctive features, if it is 
only to correct those vague and colorless notices of him that 
have appeared. 

This is due to the legal profession. But, after all, his early 
career interests a much wider circle. We cannot all be judges, 
but we can all do great things by the perseverance, which, from 
an oflSce boy, made this man a clerk, a counsel, and a judge. 
Do but measure the difficulties he overcame in his business with 
the difficulties of rising in any art, profession, or honorable 
walk; and down with despondency's whine, and the groans of 
self-deceiving laziness. You who have youth and liealth, never 
you quail ^ 

"At those twin jailers of the daring heart, 
Low birth and iron fortune." 

See what becomes of those two bugbears when the stout 
champion! 8iNGiiE-HE ART and the giant Perseverance take them 
by the throat. 

Why the very year those chilling lines were first given to the 
public by Bulvver and Macready, Robert Lush paid his wife's 
dowry away to Gray's Inn in fees, and never whined nor doubted 
nor looked right nor left, but went straight on — and prevailed. 

Genius and talent may have their bounds — but to the power of 
single-hearted perseverance there is no known limit. 

Natl omnismortuus est; the departed judge still teaches from 
his tomb; his dicta wiU outlive him in our English Courts; his 
gesta are for mankind. 

Such an instance of single-heartedness, perseverance and pro- 
portionate success in spite of odds is not for one narrow island, 
but the globe; an old man sends it to the young in both hemi- 
•pheres with this comment: If difiiculties tie in tl)e way, never 
shirk them, but think of Robert Lush, and trample on them. If 
impossibilities encounter you — up hearts and at 'em. 

One thing more to those who would copy Robert Lush in all 
essentials. Though impregnated from infancy with an honorable 
ambition, he remembered his Creator in the days of his youth; 
nor did he forget Him, when tlie world poured its honors on 
him, and those insidious temptations of prosperity, which have 
hurt the soul far oftener than "low birth and iron fortune." 
He flourished in a skeptical age; yet he lived, and died, fearing 
God, 



U READJANA. 

A HERO AND A MARTYR. 

There is an old man in Glasgow, who has saved more than 
forty lives in the Clyde, many of them with great peril to his 
own. Death has lately removed a French hero, who was his 
rival, and James Lambert now stands alone in Europe. The 
Frenchman saved more lives than Lambert, but then he did 
most of his work with a boat and saving gear. The Scot had 
nothing but his own active body, liis rare power of suspending 
his breath, and liis lion heart. Two of liis feats far surpass any- 
thing recorded of his French competitor; he was upset in a boat 
with many companions, seized and dragged to the bottom, yet 
contrived to save nearly them aU; and, on another occasion, 
when the ice had broken under a man, and the tide sucked him 
under to a distance of several yards, James Lambert dived under 
the ice, and groped for the man tiU he was nearly breathlf»ss, 
and dragged him back to the hole, and all but died in saving 
him. Here the cliances were nine to one against his ever find- 
ing that small aperture again, and coming out alive. Superior 
in daring, to his one European rival, be has yet another title to 
the sympathy of mankind; he is blind: and not by any irrel- 
evant accident, but in consequence of his heroism and his good- 
ness. He was working at a furnace one wintry day, and 
perspiring freely. The cry got up that a man was drowning. 
He flung himself, all heated as he was, into i^y wat r, and, when 
he came out, he lost his sight for a time on the very bank. His 
sight returned; but ever after that day he was subject to similar 
seizures. They became more frequent, and the intervals of 
sight more rare, until the darkness settled down, and the light 
retired forever. 

The meaning of the word " martyr" is — a noan who is pun- 
ished for a gi'eat virtue by a great calamity. Every martyr in 
Fox's book, or Butler's, or the " Acta Sanctorum," or the " Vitae 
Patrum Occideutis," comes under that definition; but not more 
so than James Lambert, and the hero who risks his life in sav- 
ing, is just as much a hero as he who risks his life in killing his 
fellow-creature. Therefore I do not force nor pervert words, but 
weigh them well, when T call James Lambert what he is — a 
hero and a martyr. Tiiat is a great deal to say of any one man; 
for all of us who are leally men or women, and not as Lambert 
once said to me " mere iaroom -besoms in the name of men," 
admire a hero, and pity a martyr, alive or dead. 

In espousing this hero's cause I do not follow a worthy exam- 
ple. Mr. Hugh M'Donald was a Glasgow citizen, and a man 
known by many acts of charity and public feeling. He revealed 
to the Giasglow public the very existence of Bums' daughter, 
and awakened a warm interest in her; and in 1856 he gave the 
city an account of James Lamliert's deeds and affliction, and 
asked a subscription. Glasgow responded warmly; £260 was 
raised, and afterward £70. The sum total was banked and 
doled to James Lambert ten shillings per week. However, 
the subscribers made one great mistake, they took for granted 
Lambert would not outlive their money; but he has. 



READIANA. il 

Tn 1868, having read Mr. M'Donald's account. I visited Lam- 
bert, and heard his story. Being now blind, and compelled to 
live in the past, he had a vivid recollection of his greatest deedp 
and told me them with spirit. I, wtio am a painstaking man, 
and owe my success to it, wrote down the particulars, and the 
very words" that, he said, had passed on these grand occasions. 
Next day, I took the blind hero down to the Clyde, whose every 
bend he knew at that tijne, and made him repeat to me every 
principal incident on its own spot. From titat day I used to 
send James Lambert money and clothes at odd times; but I did 
not write about him for years. However, in 1874, I published 
my narrative (entitled " A hero and a Martyr ") in the Pall Mall 
Gazette, London, the Tribune, New York, and a shilling pam- 
phlet with a. fine engraving of James Lamb_rt. I invited a 
subscription, and, avoiding the error of the former sub- 
scribers, announced from the first that it sijould be directed 
to buying James Lambert a small annuity for life. The 
printed story flew round the world. Letters and small sub- 
scriptions poured in from every part of England, and in due 
course from Calcutta, from tlie Australian capitals, from New 
York, Boston, San Francisco, and even from Valparaiso in Chili, 
An American boy sent me a dollar from New Orleans. Two 
American children sent me a dollar from Chicago. A warm- 
hearted Glasgow man wrote to me with rapture from the State 
of Massachusettes, to say every word was true; he remembered 
blythe Jamie well, and his unrivaled reputation, remembered 
his saving the mill-girls, and added an incident to my narrative, 
that in all the liorror of the scenes James Lambert's voice 
had been heard from the bank shouting lustily, " Dinna grip my 
arms, lassies; hing on to my skirts." The English papers quoted 
largely from the narrative and recommended the subscriptions* 
But, whilst the big world rang with praises of the Glasgo^v hero,- 
and thrilled with pity for the Glasgow martyr, detractors alid 
foes started up in a single city." And what was the name of that 
city? Was it Rome jealous ff)r Regulus and Quintus? Was it 
Tarsus jealous for St. Paul ? Was it Edinburgh, Liverpool, Paris, 
or Washington ? Oh, dear no: marvelous to relate, it was Glas- 
gow, the City of Hugh Macdonald, the hero's own birthplace — 
and the town which the world honors for having produced him. 
These detractors deny James Lambert's exploits, or say they 
were few and small, not many and great. They treat his blind- 
ness and its cause as a mere irrelevant trifle, and pretend he 
squandered the last subscription — which Is a lie, for he never 
had the control of it, and it lasted ten years. Scribblers who 
get drunk three times a week, pretend that Lambert — who, by 
the admission of his enemy McEwen, has not been drunk once 
these last five years — is an habitual drunkard, and that they, 
of all people, are shocked at it. Need I say that these de- 
tractors from merit and misfortune are anonymous writers in 
the " Glasgow Press.-' It does not follow they are aU natives 
of Glasgow. Two of them, at least, are dirty little pennv-a- 
liners from London. The pubUc knows nothing about the Press, 
and is easily gulled by it. But I know all about the Press, inside 



18 READIANA. 

and out, and shall reveal the true motive of the little newspaper 
conspiracy against Lambert and Reade. It is just the jealousy of 
ithe little provincial scribbler maddened by the overwhelming su- 
periority of the national writer. I'll put the minds of these 
iquilldrivers into words for you. "Curse it all! there was a 
hero and a mai'tyr in our midst, and we hadn't the luck to spot 
him. [In reality they had not brains enough in their skulls nor 
blood enough in their hearts to spot him. But it is their creed, 
that superior discernment is all luck.j Then comes this cursed 
Englishman and hits the theme we missed. What can we pig- 
mies do now to pass for giants ? It's no use om* telling the truth 
and playing second fiddle. No — our only chance now, to give 
ourselves importance, is to hiss down both the hero and his 
chronicler. If we call Lambert an imposter and a drunkard, 
and Reade a mercenarj fool, honest folk will never divine that 
we are ourselves the greatest drunkards, the gi'eatest dunces, 
and the most habitual liars in tl.e city."' That was the little game 
of the Glasgow penny-a-liners, and twopenre-a-liars; and every 
man in Scotland, who knows the provincial Press, saw through 
these caitiffs at a glance. But the public is weak and credulous. 
Now, they might as well bay the moon as bark at me; I stand 
too high above their reach in the just respect of the civilized 
world. But they can hui't James Lambert, because he is their 
townsman. Therefore, I interfere and give the citizens of Glas- 
gow the key to the Glasgow backbiters of a Glasgow hero and 
martyr. I add one proof that this is the true key. The exploits 
and the calamity of James Lambert were related by Hugh Mac- 
donald eighteen years ago when proofs were plentiful. If they 
were true eighteen years ago how can they be false now ? Answer 
me that, honest men of Glasgow, who don't scribble in papers 
and call black white. Can facts be true when told by a Glasgow 
man, yet turn false when told by an Englishman???!!! Now 
observe — they might have shown their clannishness as nobly as 
they have shown it basely. There are brave men in England — 
many; and unfortunate men — many; whom a powerful English 
writer could celebrate. But no — he selects a Scotchman for his 
theme, and makes the great globe admire him, and moves Eng- 
land to pity and provide for him. Any Scotch writer worthy of 
the name of Scotchman, or man, observing this, would have 
said — "Well, this English chap is not narrow-minded anyway. 
You need not be a Cockney to win his heart and gain his pen. 
He is warmer about this Glasgow man, than we ever knew him 
to be about a south countryman. It is a good example. Let us 
try and rise to his level, and shake hands with the Southron o^er 
poor Jamie Lambert." This is how every Scotsman, worthy 
of the name, would have felt and argued. But these Glasgow 
sci"ibblers are few of them Scotsmen, and none of them men. 
The line they have taken in vilifying a blind man, who lost his 
sight by benevolent heroism, is one that hell chuckles at, and 
man recoils from. They have disgraced the city of Glasgow and 
human nature itself. Whatever may be the faults of the work- 
ing classes they are MEN. Anonymous slanderers and detract- 
ors are not men— -they are mere lumps of human filth. I tliere- 



tiEADlANA. 19 

fore ask the operatives of Glasgow, and the manly citizens, to 
shake off these lumps of dirt and detraction, and aid me to take 
the Glasgow hero a^nd martyr out of all his troubles. 

The Frenchman I have mentioned had one great title to sym- 
pathy, whereas Lambert has two; and this is bow France 
treated her heroic son. He lived at the public expense, but free 
as air. The public benefactor was not locked up and hidden 
from the public. His breast was emblazoned with medals, and 
amongst them shone the great national order, the Cross of the 
Legion of Honor, which many distinguished noblemen and 
gentlemen have sighed for in vain; and when he walked abroad 
every gentleman in the country doffed his hat to him. Thus 
does France treat a great saver of human lives. James Lambert 
lives at the public expense, but not as that Frenchman lived. 
It grieves my heart to say it; but the truth is, James Lambert 
lives unhappily. He is in an almshouse, which partakes of the 
character of a prison. It is a gloomy, austere place, and that 
class of inmates, to which he belongs, are not allowed to cross 
the threshold upon their own business, except once in a fort- 
night. But to ardent spirits loss of liberty is misery. Meanly 
clad, poorly fed, well in, prisoned, and little respected — such is 
the condition of James Lambert in Glasgow, his native city. 
Yet he is the greatest man in that city, and one of the very few 
men now living in it, whose name will ring in history a hundred 
years hence; the greatest saver of lives in Europe; a man whose 
name is even now honored in India and Australia, in the United 
States and Canada, and indeed from the rising to the setting sun, 
tlianks to Ids own merit, the power of the pen, and the circula- 
tion of the Press — a true hero and a true martyr, glorious by his 
deeds and sacred by his calamity. 



A DRAMATIC MUSICIAN. 
To THE Editor of the ''Era.'' 

Sir. — There died the other day in London a musician, who used 
to compose, or set, good music to orchestral instruments, and 
play it in the theater with spirit and taste, and to watch the 
stage with one eye and the orchestra with another, and so ac- 
company with vigilant delicacy a mixed scene of action and 
dialogue: to do which the music must be full when the actor 
works in silence, but subdued promptly as often as the actor 
speaks. Thus it enhances the action without drowning a spoken 
line. 

These are varied gifts, none of them common, and music is a 
popular art. One would think, then, that such a composer and 
artist would make bis fortune nowadays. Not so. Mr. Edwin 
Ellis lived sober, laborious, prudent, respected, and died poor. 
He was provident and insured Ids life; he had a family and so 
small an income that he could not keep up the insurance. He 
has left a wife and nine children utterly destitute, and he coul4 



20 READIA2}J. 

not possibly help it. The kindest-hearted Profession in the world 
— though burdened with many charitable claims — will do what 
it can for them; but I do think the wliole weight ought not to 
fall upon actors and musicians. The man was a better servant 
of the public than people are aware, and therefore, T ask leave to 
say a few words to the public and to the Press over his ill-re- 
munerated art, and his untimely grave. 

Surely the pi'izes of the theater are dealt too unevenly, when 
such a man, for his compositions and his performance receives 
not half the salary of many a third-class performer on the stage, 
works his heart out, never wastes a shilling, and dies without 
one. 

No individual is to blame; but the system seems indiscriminat- 
ing and unjust, and arises from a special kind of ignorance, 
which is very general, but I think and hope is curable. 

Dramatic effects are singularly complex, and they cannot 
really be understood unless they are decomposed. But it is rare 
to find, out of the Iheater, a niiud accustomed to decompose 
them. The writer is constantly blamed for the actor's misinter- 
pretation, and the actor for the writer's feebleness. Indeed, the 
general inability to decompose and so discriminate goes so far as 
this — You hear an author gravely accused by a dozen commen- 
tators of writing a new play four hours long. Of tliose four 
hours, the stage-carpenter occupied one hour and thirty minutes. 
Yet they aecribe that mechanic's delay to the lines and delivery, 
when all the time it was the carpenter, who had not rehearsed 
his part, and therefore kept the author and the actors waiting, 
just as long as he did the audience. 

Where the habit of decomposing effects is so entirely absent, 
it follows, as a matter of course, that the subtle subsidiary art of 
the able leader is not distinguished, and goes for nothing in the 
public estimate of a play. I suppose two million people Lave 
seen Shaun the Post escape from his prison by mounting: the 
ivied tower, and have panted at the view. Of those two million 
how many are aware that they saw with the ear as well 
as the eye, and that much of their emotion was caused by 
a mighty melody, such as effeminate Italy never produced 
— and never will till she breeds more men and less monks — 
being played all the time on tlie great principle of climax, 
swelling higher and higher, as the hero of the scene mounted 
and surmounted ? Not six in the two million spectators, I be- 
lieve. Mr. Ellis has lifted scenes and situations for me and 
other writers scores of times, and his share of the effect never 
been ptiblicly noticed. When he had a powejful action or im- 
passioned dialogue to illustrate, he did not habitually run to the 
poor resource of a " hurry" or a nonsense "tremolo,"' but loved 
to find an appropriate melody, or a rational sequence of chords, 
or a motived strain, that raised the scene or inforced the 
dialogue. As to his other qualities, it was said of Caesar that he 
was a general who used not to say to his soldiers "go" but 
" come," and that is how Mr. Ellis led an orchestra. He showed 
them how to play with spirit by doing it himself. He was none 
of your sham leaders with a baton, but a leal leader with a 



READIANA. 21 

riolin, that set his band on fire. A little while before he died 
he tried change of air, by the kind permission of Messrs. Gatti, 
and he helped nie down at Liverpool. He entered a small 
orchesti-a of good musicians that liad become languid. He 
waked them up directly, and they played such fine music and 
so finely that the entr'acte music became at once a feature of the 
entertainment. A large theater used to ring nightly with the 
performance of fifteen musicians only; and the Lancashii'e lads, 
who know what is good, used to applaud so loudly and persist- 
ently that Mr. Ellis had to rise nightly in' the orchestra and bow 
to them before the curtain could be raised. 

Then I reneat that there must be something wrong in the 
scale of remuneration, when such a mau works for many years 
and dies in need, without improvidence. In all otlier professions 
there are low rewards and high rewards. On what false prin- 
ciples dues such a man as Ellis receive the same pittance as a 
mediocre leader, who doses a play with tremolo, and " hurries," 
and plays you dead with polkas between the acts, and, though 
playing to a British audience, rarely plays a British melody but 
to destroy it by wrong time, wrorg rhythm, coarse and slovenly 
misinterpretation, plowing immortal airs, not playing them ? 

I respectfully invite the Press, over this sad grave, to look into 
these matters — to adopt tlie habit of decomposing all the com- 
plex effects of a theatre; to ignore nobody, neither artist nor 
mechanic, who affects the public; to time tlie cai-penters' delays 
on a first night and report them to a second; to time the au- 
thor's lines and report their time to a minute; to criticise as an 
essential part of the performance the music, appropriate or in- 
appropriate, intelligent or brainless, that accompanies the lines 
and action; and not even to ignore the quality and execution of 
the entr'acte music. A thousand people have to listen to it 
three quarters of an hour, and those thousand people ought not 
to be swindled out of a part of their money by the misinterpre- 
tation of Italian overtures or by the everlasting performance of 
polkas and waltze?. These last are good mu'^ical accompani- 
ments to the foot, biit to seated victims they are not music, but 
mere rhythmical thumps. There is no excuse for this eternal 
trash, since the stores of good music are infinite. 

If the Press will deign to take a hint from me, and so set 
themselves to decompose and discriminate, plaj'S will soon be 
played quicker on a first night, and accompliphed artists like 
Edwin Ellis will not work hard, live soberly, and die poor. 
Meantime, I do not hesitate to ask the public to repair in some 
degree Ihe injustice of fortune. Millions of people have passed 
happy evenings at. the Adelphi Theater. Thousands have heard 
Mr. Ellis accompany llie Wandering Heir, and between the acts 
play his " Songs without Music " at the Queen's. I ask them to 
believe me that this deserving and unfortunate musician caused 
much of their enjoyment though they were not conscious of it 
at the time. Those spectators, and all who favor me with their 
confidence in matters of charity, I respectfully invite to aid the 
Theatrical and l^Iusical Professions in the effort they are now 



32 EEADIAJ^Ar^ 

making to save from dire destitution the widow and children of 
that accomplished artist and worthy man. 
I am, sir, yours respectfully, 

CHARLES READE. 



DEATH OF WINWOOD READE. 
From the " Daily Telegraph," April 26, 1876. 

We re^et to announce the death of Mr. Winwood Reade, well- 
known as an African traveler and correspondent, and by many 
works of indubitable power. This remarkable man closed, on 
Saturday last. AprU 24, a laborious caieer, cheered with few of 
Fortune's smiles. As a youth he had shown a singular taste for 
natural science. This, however, was interrupted for some years 
by University studies, and afterward by an honest but unavailing 
attempt to master the art of Fiction, before possessing sufficient 
experience of life. He produced, however, two or tliree novels 
containing some good and racy scenes, unskillfully connected, 
and one (" See Saw,") which is a well constnicted tale. He also 
puijlished an archaeological volume, entitled " The Vale of Tsis." 
The theories of M. Du Chaillu as to the power and aggressive 
character of the gorilla inflamed Mr. Reade's curiosity and 
awakened his dormant genius. He raised money upon his in- 
heritance, and set out for Africa fully equipped. He hunted the 
gorilla persistently, and found him an exceedingly timorous 
animal, inaccessible to European sportsmen in the thick jungles 
which he inhabits. Mr. Reade then pushed his researches an- 
other way. On his return he published " Savage Africa," a re- 
markable book, both in matter and style. 

After some years, devoted to general science and anonymous 
literature, he revisited that Continent — "whose fatal fascina- 
tions," as he himself wrote, "no one having seen and suffered, 
can resist," and this time penetrated deep into the interior. In 
this exhibiton he faced many dangers quite ^alone. was often 
stricken down with fever, and sometimes ii danger of his life 
from violence, and once was taken prisoner by cannibals. His 
quiet fortitude and indomitable will carried a naturally feeble 
body through it all, and he came home weak, but apparently un- 
injured in constitution. He now published two volumes in 
quick succession — " The Martyrdom of Man," and the "African 
Sketchbook " — both of which have Tnet with warm admiration 
and severe censure. Mr. Reade was now, nevertheless, generally 
recognized by men of science, and particularly by Dr. Darwin 
and his school. In November, 1873, he became the Times^ cor- 
respondent in the Ashantee war, and, as usual, did not spare 
himself. From this, his third African expedition, he returned a 
broken man. The mind had been too strong for the body, and 
he was obliged to halt on the wav home. Early in this present 
year, disease, both of the heart and lungs, declared itself, and he 
wasted away slowly but inevitably. He wrote his last work. 
♦* The Outcast," with the hand of death upon him. Two zealoug 



BEADIANA, 23 

friends can-ied him out to Wimbledon, and there, for a day or 
two, the air seemed to revive him; but on PYiday night he began 
to sink, and on Saturday afternoon died, in the arms of his be- 
loved imcle, Mr. Charles Reade. 

The vriter thus cut off in his prime entered life with excellent 
prospects; he was heir to considerable estates, and gifted with 
genius. But he did not Jive long enough to inherit the ooe or to 
mature the other. His whole public career embraced but fifteen 
years; yet in another fifteen he would probably have won a 
great name, and cured himself, as many thinking men have 
done, of certain obnoxious opinions, which laid him open to 
reasonable censure, and also to some bitter personalities that 
were out of place, since truth can surely prevail without either 
burning or abusing men whose convictions are erroneous but 
honest. He felt these acrimonious comments, but bore them 
with the same quiet fortitude by help of which he had endured 
his sufferings in Africa, and now awaited the sure approach of 
an untimely death at home. Mr. Reade surpasses most of the 
travelers of his day in one great quality of a writer — style. His 
English, founded on historical models, has the pomp and march 
of words, is often racy, often picturesque, and habitually power- 
ful yet sober; ample' yet not turgid. He died in his thirty- 
seventh year. 



CEEMONA FIDDLES. 

From the "Pall Mall Gazette." 

FIRST LETTER. 

August mh, 1872. 

Under this heading, for want of a better, let me sing the four- 
stringed instruments that were made in Italy from about 1560 to 
1760, and varnished with high-colored yet transparent varnishes, 
the secret of which, known to numberless families in 1745, had 
vanished off the earth by 1760, and has now for fifty years 
baffled the laborious researches of violin makers, amateurs, and 
chemists. That lost art I will endeavor to restore to the world 
through the medium of your paper. But let me begin with 
other points of connoisseurship, illustrating them as far as 
possible by the specimens on show at the South Kensington 
Museum. 

The modern orchestra uses four stringed instruments, played 
•with tlie bow; the smallest is the king; its construction is a 
marvel of art; and. as we are too apt to un'^ierrate familiar 
miracles, let me analyze this wooden paragon by way of show- 
ing what great architects in wood those Italians were, who in- 
vented this instrument and its fellows at Brescia and Bologna. 
The violin itself, apart from its mere accessories, consists of a 
scroll or head, weighing an ounce or two, a slim neck, a thin 
back, that ought to be made of Swiss sycamore, a thin belly of 
Swiss deal, and sides of Swiss sycamore no thicker than a six- 
pence. This Uttle wooden shell delivers an amount of sound 



S4 READIANA. 

that is simply monstrous: but, to do that, it must submit to a 
strain, of which the public has no conception. Let us suppose 
two claimants to take opposite ends of a violin-string, and to 
pull against each other with all their weight; the tension of the 
string so produced would not ec(ual the tension which is created 
by the screw in raising that string to concert pitch. Consider, 
then, that not one but four strings tug night and day, like a 
team of demons at the wafer-like sides of this wooden shell. 
Why does it not collapse; well, it would collapse with a crash, 
long before the strings reached concert pitch, if the Tiolin was 
not a wonder inside as well as out. The problem was to with- 
stand that severe pressure without crippling the vast vibration 
by solidity. The inventors approached the difficulty thus: they 
inserted six blocks of lime, or some light wood; one of these 
blocks at tlie lower end of the violin, one at the upper and one 
at each corner — the corner blocks very small and triangular; 
the top and bottom blocks much larger, and shaped like a capi- 
tal D, the straight line of the block lying close to the sides, and 
the curved line outward. Then they sliglitly connected all 
the blocks by two sets of linings; these linings are not above a 
quarter of an inch deep, I suppose, and no thicker than an old 
penny piece, but ihey connect those six blocks and help to dis- 
tribute the resistance. 

Even so the shell would succumb in time; but now the in- 
ventor killed two birds with one stone; he cunningly diverted a 
portion of the pressure by the very means that were necessary 
to the sound. He placed the bridge on the belly of the violin, 
and that raised the strings out of the direct line of tension, and 
relieved the lateral pressure at the expense of the belly; But as 
the belly is a weak arch, it must now be strengthened in its 
turn. Accordingly, a bass-bar was glued horizontally to the 
belly tinder one foot of the bridge. This bass-bar is a very small 
piece of deal, about the length and half the size of an old-fash- 
ioned lead pencil, but, the ends being tapered off, it is glued on 
to the belly, with a spring in it, and supports the belly magically. 
As a proof how nicely all these things were ba lanced, the basn- 
bar of Gasparo da Salo, the Amati, and Stradiuarius, being a 
little shorter and shallower than a modern bass-bar, did ad- 
mirably for their day, yet will not do now. Our raised concert 
pitch has clapped on more tension, and straightway you must 
remove the bass-bar even of Stradiuarius, and substitute one a 
little longer and deeper, or your Cremona sounds like a strung 
frying-pan. 

Remove now from the violin, which for two centuries has en- 
dured this strain, the finger board, tail-piece, tail-pin and screws 
— since these are the instruments or vehicles of tension, not ma- 
terials of resistance — and weigh the violin itself. It weighs, I 
suppose, about twenty ounces: and it has fought hundred- 
weights of pressure for centuries. A marvel of construction, it 
is also a marvel of sound; it is audible further off than the 
gigantic pianoforte, and its tones in a master's hand go to the 
heart of man. It can be prostituted to the performance of diffi- 
culties, and often is; but that is not its fault. Genius can make 



HEADIANA. 25 

your very heart dance with it, or your eyes to fill; and Niel 
Gow, who was no romancer, but only a dkeper critic than his 
fellows, when being asked what was the true test of a player, 
replied: " A mon is a player when he can gar himsel' greet 

Wl' HIS fiddle." 

Asking forgiveness for this preamble, I proceed to inquire 
what country invented these four-striiigecl and four-coinered 
instruments? 

I understand that France and Germany have of late raised 
some pretensions. Counoisseurship and etymology are both 
against them. Etymology suffices. The French terms are all 
derived from the Italian, and that disposes of France. I will go 
into German pretensions critically, if any one will show me as 
old and specific a German word as viola and violino, and the 
music composed for those German instruments. " Fiddle " is of 
vast antiquity; but pear-shaped, till Italy invented the four cor- 
ners, on which sound as well as beauty depends. 

The Order of Invention. — Etymology decides with unerring 
voice that the violoncello was invented after the violono 
or double-bass, and connoisseurship proves by two distinct 
methods that it was invented after the violin. 1st, the critical 
method: it is called after the violin, yet is made on the plan of 
the violin, with arched back and long inner-bought. 2d, the 
historical method: a violoncello made by the inventors of the 
violin is incomparably rare, and this instrument is dispropor- 
tionately rare even up to the year 1610. Violino being a deriva- 
tive of viola would seem to indicate that the violin followed the 
tenor; but this taken alone is dangerous; for v?ola is not only a 
specific term for the tenor, but a generic name that was in Italy 
a hundred years before a tenor with four strings was made. To 
go then to connoisseurship — I find that I have fallen in with as 
many tenors as violins by Gasparo da Salo, who worked from 
about 1555 to 1600, and not quite so many byGio Paolo Maggini, 
who began a few years later. The violin being the kmg of all 
these instruments, I think there would not be so many tenors 
made as violins, when once the violin had been invented. 
Moreover, between the above dates came Corelli, a composer 
and violinist. He would naturally create a crop of vioUns. 
Finding the tenors and violins of Gasparo da Salo about equal 
in number, I am driven to the conclusion that the tenor had 
an unfair start — in other words, was invented first. I add 
to this that true four-stringed tenors by Gasparo da Salo 
exist, though very rare, made with only two comers, 
which is a more primitive form than any violin by the same 
maker appears in. For this and some other reasons, I have little 
doubt tiie viola preceeded the violin by a very few years. What 
puzzles me more is to time the viohn, or, as we childishly call it 
(after its known descendant), the doulale-bass. If I was so pre- 
sumptuous as to trust to my eye alone, I should say it was the 
first of them aU. It is an instrument which does not seem to 
mix with these four-stringed upstarts, but to belong to a much 
older family — viz., the viola d'amore, da gamba, &c. In the 
first place it has not four strings; secondly, it has not an arched 



26 READIANA. 

back, but a flat back, with a peculiar shoulder, copied from the 
viola da gamba; thirdly, the space between the upper and lower 
corners in the early specimens is ludicrously short. And it is 
hard to believe that an eye, which had observed the graceful 
proportions of the tenor and violin, could be guilty of such a 
wretched little inner-bought as you find in a double-bass of 
Brescia. Per contra, it must be admitted, first, that the sound- 
hole of a Brescian double-bass seems copied from the four- 
stringed tribe, and not at all from the elder family; secondly, 
that the violin and tenor are instruments of melody and harmony, 
but the violin of harmony only. This is dead against its being 
invented until after tlie instruments to which it is subsidiary. 
Man invents only to supply a want. Thus, then, it is. First, 
the large tenor, played between tlie knees; then the violin, play- 
ed under the chin; then (if not the first of them all) the small 
doubJe-bass: then, yeai's after the violin, the violoncello; then 
the full sized double-bass; then, longo intervallo, the small tenor, 
played under the chin. 

However, I do not advance these conclusions as infallible. 
The highest evidence on some of these points must surely lie in 
manuscript music of the sixteenth century, much of which is 
preserved in the libraries of Italy; and, if Mr. Hatton or any 
musician leamei in the history of his art will tell me for what 
stringed instruments the immediate predecessors of Corelli, and 
Corelli at his commencement, marlced their compositions, I shall 
receive the communication with gratitude and respect. I need 
hardly say that nothing but the MS. or the editio princeps is evi- 
dence in so nice a matter. 

The first known maker of the true tenor, and probably of the 
violin, was Gasparo da Salo. The student who has read the 
valuable work put forth by Monsieur Fetis and Monsieur Vuil- 
laume might imagine that I am contradicting them here; for 
they quote as "luthiers" — antecedent to Gasparo da Sato — 
Kerlino, Duiffoprugcar, LinaroUi, Dardelli, and others. These 
men, I grant you, worked long before Gasparo da Salo; I even 
offer an independent proof, and a very simple one. I find that 
their genuine tickets are in Gothic letters, whereas those of 
Gasparo da Salo are in Roman type; but I know the works of 
those makers, and they did not make tenors nor violins. They 
ma^e instruments of the older family, viole d'amore, da 
gamba, etc. Their time tickets are all black letter tickets, and 
not one such ticket exists in any old violin, nor in a single 
genuine tenor. The fact is that the tenor is an instrument of 
unfixed dimensions, and can easily be reconstructed out of dif- 
ferent viole made in an earlier age. There are innumerable ex- 
amples of this, and happily tlie Exhibition furnishes two. There 
are two curious instruments strung as tenors, Nos. 114 and 134 
in the catalogue; one is given to Joan Carlino, and year 1452; 
the other to Linaro, and 1563. These two instruments were both 
made by one man, Ventura LinaroUi, of Venice (misspelt by 
M. Fetis, Venturi), about the year 1520. Look at the enormous 
breadth between the sound-holes; that shows they were made 
to caiTy six or seven strings. Now look at the scrolls; both oj 



READIANA. 27 

them new, because the old scrolls were primitive things with 
six or seven screws; it is only by such reconstruction that a tenor 
or violin can be set up as anterior to Gasparo da Salo. No 114, 
is, however, a real gem of antiquity; the wood and varnish ex- 
quisite, and far fresher than nine Amatis out of ten. It is well 
worthy the special attention of collectors. It was played upon 
the knee. 

There are in the collection two instruments by Gasparo da Salo 
worth especial notice; a tenor, No. 143, and a violono, or primi- 
tive double-bass, 199. The tenor is one of his later make, -yet 
has a grand primitive character. Observe, in particular, the 
scroll all round, and the amazing inequality between the bass 
sound-hole and the purfling of the belly; this instrument and 
the grand tenor assigned to Maggini, and lent by Madame Risler, 
offer a pomt of connoiseurship worthy the student's attention. 
The back of each instrument looks fully a century younger than 
the belly. But this is illusory. The simple fact is that the 
tenors of that day, when not in use, w^ere not nursed in cases, 
but hung up on a nail, belly outward. Thus the belly caught 
the sun of Italy, the dust, &c., and its varnish was often with- 
ered to a mere resin, while the back and sides escaped. This is 
the key to that little mystery. Observe the scroll of the violono 

199. How primitive it is all round: at the back a flat cut, in 
front a single fltite, copied from its true parent, the viola da 
gamba. This scroll, taken in conjunction with the size and 
other points, marks an instrument considerably anterior to No. 

200, As to the other double-basses in the same case, they are 
assigned by their owners to Gasparo da Salo, because they are 
double purfled and look older than Cremonese violins; but these 
indicia are valueless; all Cremona and Milan double-purfled the 
violon as often as not, and the constant exposure to air and dust 
gives the violono a color of antiquity that is delusive. In no one 
part of the business is knowledge of work so necessary. The 
violoni 201-2-3, are all fine Italian instruments. The small 
violon, 202, that stands by the side of the Gasparo da Salo, 199, 
has the purfling of Andreas Amatus; the early sound-hole of 
Andreas Amatus; the exquisite corners and finish of Andreas 
Amatus; the finely cut scroll of Andreas Amatus; at the back of 
scroll the neat shell and squaxe shoulder of Andreas Amatus; 
and the back, instead of being mads of any rubbish that came to 
hand, after the manner of Brescia, is of true fiddle-wood, cut the 
bastard way of the grain, which was the taste of the Amati; and, 
finally, it is varnished with the best varnish of the Amati. 
Under these circumstances, I hope I shall not offend the owner 
by refusing it the inferior name of Gasparo da Salo. It is one of 
the brightest gems of the collection, and not easily to be matched 
in Europe, 

SECOND LETTER, 

August 2it?), 187a. 
Gio Paolo Maggini is represented at the Kensington Museum 
by an excellent violin. No. Ill, very fine in workmanship and 



28 READIANA. 

varnished, but as to the model a trifle too much hollowed at the 
sides, and so a little inferior to some of his violins, and to the 
viohn No. 70, the model of which, like many of the Brescian 
school, is simple and perfect. (Model, as applied to a violin, is a 
term quite distinct from outline.) In No. 70 both belly and back 
are modeled, with tLe simplicity of genius, by even gradation, 
from the center, which is the highest part, down to all the borders 
of the instrument. The world bas come back to this primitive 
model after trying a score, and prejudice gives tlie whole credit 
to Joseph Guarnerius, of Cremona. As to the date of No. 70, 
the neatness and, above all, the slimness of the sound-hole, 
mark, I think, a period slightly posterior to frasparo da Salo. 
This slim sound-hole is an advance, not a retrogi-ession. The 
gaping sound-holes of Gasparo da Salo and Maggini were their 
one great error. They were not only ugly; they lessened the 
ring by allowing the vibration to escape from the cavity too 
qmckly. No. 60, assigned. to Duiffoprugcar and a fabulous an- 
tiquity, was made by some 'prentice hand in the seventeenth 
century; but No. TO would adorn any collection, being an old 
master- piece of Brescia or Bologna. 

The School of Cremona, — Andreas Amatus was more than 
thirty years old, and an accomplis' ed maker of the older viole, 
when the violin was invented in Brescia or Bologna. He does 
not appear to have troubled his head with the new instrument 
for some years; one proof more that new they were. They 
would not at first materially influence his established trade: the 
old and new family ran side by side. Indeed it took the 
violin tribe two centuries to drivn out the viola da gamba. How- 
ever, in due course, Andreas Amatus set to work on violins. 
He learned from the Brescian school the only things they could 
teach a workman so superior — viz., the four corners and the 
sound-hole. This Brescian sound-bole stuck to him all his days; 
but what he had loarned in his original art remained by him too. 
The collection contains three specimens of his handiwork: Vio- 
lin 203, Mrs. Jay's violin — with the modern head — erroneously 
assigned to Antonius and Hieronymus; and violoncello No. 183. 
There are also traces of his hand in tlie fine tenor 139. In the 
thi'ee instruments just named the purfling is composed in just 
proportions, so that the white comes out with vigor; it is then 
inlaid'Hth great neatness. The violoncello is the gem. Its 
outlirHh's grace itself; the four exquisite curves coincide in one 
p. 'e £tl5d serpentine design. This bass is a violin souffle; were it 
shown at a distance it w ould take the appearance of a most ele- 
gant violin; tlie best basses of Stradiuarius alone will stand this 
test. Apply it to the Venetian mastei-piece in the same case.) 
The scroll is perfect in desisrn and chiseled ss by a sculptor; the 
purfling is quite as fine as Stradiuarius; it is violin purfling, yet 
this seems to add elegance without meanness. It is a master- 
piece of Cremona, all but the hideous sound-hole that alone con- 
nects this master with the Brescian school. 

His sons Antonius and Hieronymus soon cured themselves of 
that grotesque sound-hole, and created a great school. They 
chose better wood and made richer varnish, and did many beau- 



READIANA. 29 

tiful things. Nevertheless, they infected Italian fiddle-making 
with a fatal error. They were the first SCOOPERS. Having im- 
proved on Brescia iu outline and details, they assumed too hastily 
that they could improve on her model. So they scooped out the 
wood about the sound-holes and all around, weakening the con- 
nection of the center with the sides of the belly, and checlr^n^ 
the fullness of the vibration. The German school carried this 
vice much farther, but the Amati went too far, and inoculated a 
hundred fine makers with a wrong idea. It took Stradiuaiius 
himself fifty -six years to get entirely clear of it. 

The brothers Amati are represented in this collection, first by 
several tenors that once were noble things, but have been cut on 
the old system, which was downright wicked. It is cutting in 
the statutory sense, viz., cutting and maiming! These ruthless 
men just sawed a crescent off the top, and another oft" the bot- 
tom, and the result is a thing with the inner bought of a giant 
and the vipper and lower bought of a dwarf. If one of these 
noble instruments survives in England uncut, I implore, the 
owner to spare it; to play on a £5 tenor, with the Amati set 
before him to look at wliile he plays. Luckily the scrolls remain 
to us; and let me draw attention to the scroll of 136. Look at 
the back of this scroll, and see how it is chiseled — the center line 
in relief, how Bharp, distinct, and fine — this line is obtained by 
chiseling out tlie wood on both sides with a single tool, which 
fiddle-makers call a gauge, and there is nothing but tlie eye to 
guide the hand. 

There are two excellent violins of this make in the collection 
—Mrs. Jay's, and the violin of Mr. C. J. Read, No. 75. This lat- 
ter is the large pattern of those makers, and is more elegant than 
what is technically called the grand Amati, but not fo striking. 
To appreciate the merit and the defect of this instrument, com- 
pare it candidly witli the noble Stradiuarius Amatise that hangs 
by its side, numbered 83. Take a back view first. In outline 
they are much alike. In the details of work the Amati is rather 
superior; the border of the Stradiuarius is more exquisite; but 
the Amati scroll is better pointed and gauged more cleanly, the 
purfling better composed for effect, and the way that purfling 
is let in, especially at the corners, is incomparable. On the front 
view you fijid the Amati violin is scooped out here and t^^^re, a 
defect the Stradiuarius has avoided. I prefer the Strad- "^xius 
sound-hole per se; but if you look at the curves of these t\. w vicx 
iins, you will obser\'e that the Amati sotmd-holes are in strict 
harmony with the curves; and the whole thing the produpt of 
one original mind tliat saw its way. " 

Nicholas Amatus, the son of Hieronymus, owes his dioyinct 
reputation to a single form called by connoisseurs the Orrand 
Amati. This is a very large violin, with extravagantly long cor- 
ners, extremely fine in all the details. I do not think it was 
much admired at the time. At all events he made but few, and 
his copyists, with the exception of Francesco Rugger, rarely 
selected that form to imitate. But nowadays these violins are 
almost worshipped, and, as the collection is incomplete without 
one, I hope some gentleman will kindly send one in before it 



30 READIANA. 

closes. There is also wanting an Amati bass, and, if the pur- 
chaser of Mr. GiUott's should feel disposed to supply that gap, it 
would be a very kind act. The Rugger family is numerous; it 
is represented by one violin (147). 

Leaving the makers of the Guamerius family — five in number 
— till the last, we come to Antonius Stradiuarius. This unriv- 
aled workman and extraordinary man was born in 1644, and 
died in December, 1737. There is nothing signed with his name 
before 1667. He was learning his business thoroughly. From 
that date till 1736 he worked incessantly, often varying his style, 
and always improving, till he came to his climax, represented 
in this collection by the violins 83 and 87, and the violoncello 188. 

He began with rather a small, short-cornered violin, which is 
an imitation of the small Amati, but very superior. He went 
on, and imitated the large Amati, but softened down the corners. 
For thirty years — from 1673 to 1703 — he poured forth violins of 
this pattern; there are several in this collection, and one tenor, 
139, with a plain back but a beautiful belly, and in admirable 
preservation. But, while he was making these Amatise violins 
by the hundred, he had nevertheless his fits of originality, and 
put forth an anomaly everj" now and then; sometimes it was a 
very long, naiTow violin with elegant drooping corners, and 
sometimes, in a happier mood, he combined these drooping cor- 
ners with a far more beautiful model. Of these varieties No. 
86 gives just an indication; no more. These lucid intervals never 
lasted long; he Avas back to his Amatis next week. Yet they left, 
I think, the germs that broke out so marvelously in the next 
century. About the year 1703 it seems to have struck him like 
a revelation that he was a greater man than his master. He 
dropped him once and forever, and for nearly twenty years 
poured forth with unceasing fertility some admirable works, 
of which you have three fine examples, under average wear, hard 
wear, and no wear — 90, 92, 91. Please look at the three violins 
in this order to realize what I have indicated before — that time 
is no sure measure of events in this business. Nevertheless, in 
all these exquisite productions, there was one thing which he 
thought capable of improvement — there was a slight residue of 
the scoop, especially at the lower part of the back. He began 
to alter that about 1720, and by degrees went to his grand model, 
in which there is no scoop at all. This, his grandest epoch, is 
represented by the Duke (>f Cambridge's violin, Mr. Arkwright's, 
and M. le Compte's; this last has the additional characteristic of 
the stiffer sound-hole and the wood left broad in the wing of the 
sound hole. One feature more of this his greatest epoch: the 
purfling, instead of exactly following the corner, is pointed 
across it in a manner completely original. He made these grand 
violins and a bass or two till about 1729; after that the grand 
model is confined to his violins, and the details become inferior 
in finish. Of this there is an example in No 84, a noble but rough 
violin in parts of which c*Ttain connoisseurs would see, or fancy 
they saw, the hand of Bergou/i. or of Fi-ancesco or Homobuono 
Stradiuarius. These woi-kmen undoubtedly lived and survived 
their father a few years. They seem to have worked up hig 



refuse wood after his death; but their interference with his work 
while alive lias been exaggerated by French connoisseurs. To 
put a difficult question briefly; their theory fails to observe the 
style Stradiuarius was coming to even in 1727; it also ignores 
the age of Stradiuarius during this his last epoch of work, and 
says that there exists no old man's work by Stradiuarius 
himself; all this old man's work is done by younger men. 
However, generalities are useless on a subject so difficult 
and disputed. The only way is to get the doubtful vio- 
lins or basses, and analyze them, and should the muse- 
um give a permanent corner to Cremonese instruments, this 
Francesco and Homobuono question will be sifted with exam- 
ples. The minutise of work in Stradiuarius are numerous and 
admirable, but they would occupy too much space and are too 
well known to need discourse. His varnish I shall treat along 
witli the others. A few words about the man. He was a tall, 
thin veteran, always to be seen with a wdiite leathern apron and 
a nightcap on his head: in winter it was white wool, and in sum- 
mer white cotton. His indomitable industry had amassed some 
fortune, and " rich as Stradiuarius " was a byword at Cremona, 
but probably more current among the fiddle-makers than the 
bankers and merchants. His price toward the latter part of his 
career was four louis d'or for a violin; his best customers Italy 
and Spain. Mr. Forster assures us on unimpeachable authority 
that he once sent some instruments to England on sale or return, 
and that they were taken back, the merchant being unable to 
get £5 for a violoncello. What ho! Hang aU the Englishmen 
of that day who are alive to meet their deserts! However, the 
true point of the incident is. I think, missed by the nari-ators. 
The fact is, then, as now, England wanted old Cremonas, not 
new ones. That the Amati had a familiar reputation here and 
probably a ready market can be proved rather prettily out of the 
mouth of Dean Swift. A violin was left on a chair. A lady 
swept by. Her mantua caught it and knocked it down and 
broke it. Then the witty dean applied a line in "Virgil's Ec- 
logue — 

" Mantua vas miserte nimium vicina CreinouEe." 

This was certainly said during the lifetime of Stradiuarius, and 
proves that the Cremona fiddle had a fixed reputation; it also 
proves that an Irishman could make a better Latin pun than any 
old Eoman has left behind him. Since I have diverged into 
what some brute calls anec-dotage let me conclude this article 
with one that is at all events to the point, since it tells the event- 
ful history of an instrument now on show. 

The Romance of Fiddle-Dealing. — Nearly fifty years ago a 
gaunt Italian called Luigi Tarisio arrived in Paris one day with a 
lot of old Italian insti'uments by makers whose names were 
hardly known. The principal dealers whose minds were nar- 
rowed, as is often the case, to three or four makers, would not 
deal with him. M. Georges Chanot, younger and more intelli- 
gent, purchased largely, and encouraged him to return. He 
came back next year witli a better lot; and yearly increasing hia 



3» RhjAUlANA. 

funds, he flew at the highest game; and in the course of thirty 
years imported nearly all the finest specimens of Stradiuarius, and 
Guarnerius France possesses. He was the greatest connoisseur that 
ever lived or ever can live, because he had the true mind of a 
connoisseur and vast opportunities. He ransacked Italy before 
the tickets in the violins of Fi'ancesco Stradiuarius, Alexander 
Gagliano, Lorenzo Guadagnini, Giofredus Cappa, Gobetti, Mor- 
gilato Morella, Antonio Mariaui, Santo Maggini, and Matteo 
Benti of Brescia, Michel Angelo Bergonzi, Montagnana, Thomas 
Balestrieri, Storioni, Vicenzo Rugger, the Testori, Petrus Guarne- 
rius of Venice, and fully fifty more, had been tampered with, 
that every brilhant masterpiece might be assigned to some popu- 
lar name. To his immortal ciedit, he fought against this 
mania, and his motto was " A tout seigneur tout honneur." The 
man's whole soul was in fiddles. He was a great dealer, but 
a greater amateur. He had gems by him no money would buy 
from him. No. 91 was one of them. But for his death you 
would never have cast eyes on it. He has often talked to me 
of it; but he would never let me see it, for fear I should 
tempt him. 

Well, one day Georges Chanot, Senior, who is perhaps the best 
judge of violins left, now Tarisio is gone, made an excursion to 
Spain, to see if he could find anything there. He found mighty 
little. But, coming to the shop of a fiddle maker, one Ortega, 
he saw tlie belly of an old bass hung up with other things. 
Chanot rubbed his eyes, and asked himself, was he dreaming? 
the belly of a Stradiuarius bass roasting in a shop-window! He 
went in, and very soon bought it for about forty francs. He 
then ascertained that the bass belonged to a lady of rank. The 
belly was full of cracks; so, not to make two bites of a cherry, 
Ortega had made a nice new one. Chanot carried this precious 
fragment home and hung it up in his shop, but not in the win- 
dow, for he is too good a judge not to know the sun will take all 
the color out of that maker's varnish. Tarisio came in from 
Italy, and his eye lighted instantly on the Stradiuarius belly. 
He pesteied Chanot till the latter sold it him for a thousand 
francs and told him where the rest was. Tarisio no sooner knew 
this than he flew to Madrid. He learned from Ortega where the 
lady lived, and called on her to see it. " Sir," says the lady, " it 
is at your disposition." That does not mean much in Spain. 
When he offered to buy it, she coquetted with him , said it had 
been long in her family; money could not replace a thing of that 
kind, and in short, she put on the screw, as she thought, and sold 
it him for about four thousand francs. What he did with the 
Ortega belly is not known — perhaps sold it to some person in the 
tooth-pick trade. He sailed exultant for Paris with the Spanish 
bass in a case. He never let it out of his sight. The pair were 
caught by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. The ship rolled; 
Tarisio clasped his bass tight, and trembled. Ix was a terrible 
gale, and for one whole day they were in real danger. Tarisio 
spoke of it to me with a shudder. I will give you his real words, 
for they struck me at the time, and I have often thought of them 
since — 



READIANA. 33 

" Ah, my poor Mr. Reade, the bass of Spain was all but 

LOST," 

Was not this a true connoisseur ? a genuine enthusiast ? Ob- 
ser^'e 1 there was also an ephemeral insect called Luigi Tarisio, 
who would have gone down with the bass : but that made no 
impression on his mind. De minimis non curat Ludovicus. 

He got it safe to Paris. A certain high priest in these mys- 
teries, called Vuillaume, with the help of a sacred vessel, called 
the glue-pot, soon rewedded the back and sides to the belly, and 
the bass being now just what it was when the ruffian Ortega 
put his finger in the pie, was sold for 20,000 fr. (£800.) 

I saw the Spanish bass in Paris twenty-two years ago, and you 
can see it any day this month you like; for it is the identical vio- 
loncello now on show at Kensington, numbered 188. Who 
would divine its separate adventures, to see it all reposing so 
calm and uniform in that case— "Post tot nauragia tutus." 



THIRD LETTER. 

A^igust 27th, 1872. 

" The Spanish bass" is of the grand pattern and exquisitely 
made: the sound-hole, rather shorter and stiff er than m Stra- 
diuarius's preceding epoch, seems stamped out of the wood with 
a blow, so swiftly and surely is it cut. The purfling is perfec- 
tion. Look at the section of it in the upper bought of the back. 
The scroll extremely elegant. The belly is a beautiful piece of 
wood. The back is of excellent quality, but mean in the figure. 
The sides are cut the wrong way of the grain; a rare mistake in 
this master. The varnish sweet, clear, orange-colored, and full 
of fire. Oh, if this varnish could but be laid on the wood of the 
Sanctus Seraphin bass! The belly is full of cracks, and those 
cracks have not been mended without several lines of modern 
varnish clearly visible to the practiced eye. 

Some years ago there was a Stradiuarius bass in Ireland. I 
believe it was presented by General Oliver to Signor Piatti. I 
never saw it; but some people tell me that in wood and varnish 
it surpasses the Spanish bass. Should these lines meet Signor 
Piatti's eye, I will only say that, if he would allow it to be placed 
in the case for a single week, it would be a great boon to the 
admirers of these rare and noble pieces, and very instructive. 
By the side of the Spanish bass stands another, inferior to it in 
model and general work, superior to it in preservation. No. 187. 
The unhappy parts are the wood of the sides and the scroll. Bad 
wood kills good varnish. The scroll is superb in workmanship; 
it is more finely cut at the back part than the scroll of the Spanish 
bass; but it is cut out of a pear tree, and that abominable wood 
gets uglier, if possible, under varnish, and lessens the effect 
even of first-class work. On the other hand, the back and belly, 
where the varnish gets fair play, are beautiful. The belly is 
incomparable. Here is the very finest ruby varnish of Strad- 
iuarius, as pure as the day it was laid on. The back was the 
same color originally, but has been reduced in tint by the fric- 



U REAMANA. 

tion this part of a bass encounters when played on. The varnish 
on the back is chipped all over in a manner most picturesque to 
the cultivated eye\ only it nnid go no fnvther. I find on exam- 
ination that these chips have all been done a good many years 
ago, and I. can give you a fair, though of course not an exact, 
idea of the process. Methinks I see an old gentkmian seated 
sipping his last glass of port in the dioiug-room, over a shining 
table, whence the cloth was removed for dessert. He wears a 
little powder still, though no longer the fashion; be bas no 
shirt-collar, but a roll of soft and snowy cambric round his neck, 
a plain gold pin, and a frilled bosom. He has a wliite waist- 
coat — snow-white like his linen; he washes at home — and a blue 
coat with gilt buttons. Item, a large fob or watch-pocket, 
whence bulges a golden turnip, and puts forth seed, to wit, a 
bunch of seals and watch-keys, with perhaps a gold pencil-case. 
One of these seals is larger than the others; the family arms are 
engraved on it, and only important letters a.re signed with it. 
He rises and goes to the drawing-room. The piano is opened; a 
servant brings the Stradiuarius bass from the study; the old gen- 
tleman takes it and tunes it, and, not to be bothered with his 
lapels, buttons his coat, and plays his part in a quartet of 
Haydn or a symphony of Corelli, and smiles as he plays, because 
he really loves music, and is not overweighted. 

Your modern amateur, with a face of justifiable agony, plows 
the hill of Beethoven and harrows the soul of Reade. Neverthe- 
less, my smiling senior is all the time bringing the finest and 
most delicate varnish of Stradiuarius into a series of gentle col- 
lisions with the following objects: First, the gold pin; then the 
two rows of brass buttons; and last, not least, the male chatelain 
of the period. There is an oval chip just off the center of this 
bass; I give the armorial seal especial credit for that: "A tout 
seigneur tout honneur." 

Take another specimen of eccentric wear: the red Stradiuarius 
kit 88. The enormous oval wear has been done thus: It has be- 
longed to a dancing-master, and he has clapped it under his arm 
fifty times a day to show his pupils the steps. 

The Guarnerius family consisted of Andreas, his two sons, 
Petrus and Joseph, his grandson, Petrus Guarnerius of Venice, 
and Joseph Guarnerius, the greatest of the family, whom Mons. 
Fetis considers identical with Guiseppe Antonio, born in 1683. 
There are, however, great difficulties in the way of this theory, 
which I will reserve for my miscellaneous remarks. 

Andreas Guaranerius was the closest of all the copyists of the 
Amati; so close, indeed, that his genuine violins are nearly al- 
ways sold as Amati. Unfortunately he imitated the small pat- 
tern. His wood and varnish are exactly like Amati; there is, 
however, a peculiar way of cutting the lower wing of his sound- 
holes that betrays him at once. When you find him with the 
border high and broad, and the purfling grand, you may suspect 
his son Petrus of helping him, for Iiis own style is petty. His 
basses few, but fine. Petrus Guarnerius of Cremona makes vio- 
lins prodigiously homhes, and more adapted to grumbling inside 
than singing out>' but their appearance magnifi.cent, a grand 



liEADIANA. 35 

deep border, very noble, sound-hole and scroll Amatise, and a 
deep orange varnish that nothing can surpass. His violins are 
singularly scarce in England. I hope to see ono at the Exhibi- 
tion before it closes. 

Joseph, his brother, is a thorough original. His violins are 
narrowed under the shoulder in a way all his own. As to 
models, his fiddles are bombes like his brother's; and, as the 
center has generally sunk from weakness, the violin presents a 
great bump at the upper part and another at the lower. The 
violin 97 is by this maker, and is in pure and perfect condition; 
but the wood having no figure, the beauty of the varnish is not 
appreciated. He is the king of the varnishers. He was the first 
man at Cremona that used red varnish oftener than pale, and in 
that respect was the teacher even of Stradiuarius. When this 
maker deviates from his custom and puts really good hare- wood 
into a violin, then his glorious varnish gets fair play, and noth- 
ing can live beside him. The other day a violin of this make 
^vith fine wood, but undersized, was put up at an auction with- 
out a name. I suppose nobody knew the maker, for it was sold 
on its merits, and fetched £160. I brought that violin into the 
country; gave a dealer £24 for it in Paris. 

He made a very few fiatter violins, that are worth any money. 

Petrus Guarnerius, the son of this Joseph, learned his business 
in Cremona, but migrated early to Venice. He worked there 
from 1725 to 1746. He made most beautiful tenors and 
basses, but was not so happy in his violins. His varnish very 
fine, but paler than his father's. 

Joseph Guarnerius, of Cremona, made violins from about 1725 
to 1745. His first epoch is known only to connoisseurs; in cmt- 
line it is hewed out under the shoulder like the fiddle of Joseph, 
son of Andrew, who was then an old fiddle-maker, but the 
mo(iel all his own ; even, regular, and perfect. Sound- hole long 
and characteristic, head rather mean for him; he made but few 
of these essays, and then went to a different and admirable style 
a most graceful and elegant violin, which has been too loosely 
described as a copy of Stradiuarius; it is not that, but a fine vio- 
lin in which a downright good workman profits by a great con- 
temporary artist's excellences, yet without servility. These vio- 
lins are not longer nor stiffer in the inner bought than Stradi- 
uarius: they are rather narrow than broad below cut after the 
plan of Stradiuarius, though not so well, in the central part, 
the sound-holes exquisitely cut, neither too stiff nor too flowing, 
the wood between the carves of the sound-holes remarkably 
broad. The scroll grandiose, yet well cut, and the nozzle of the 
scroll and the little platform . They are generally purfled through 
both pegs, like Stradiuarius; the wood very handsome, varnish a 
rich golden brown. I brought three of this ejwch into the coun- 
tiy; one was sold the other day at Christie's for £260 (bought, I 
believe, by Lord Dunmore), and is worth £350 as prices go. 
This epoch, unfortunately, is not yet represented in the collec- 
tion. 

The next epoch is nobly repressnted by 93, 94, 95. All these vi- 
olins have the broad center, the gi-aud long inner bought, stiffish 



36 READIANA. 

yet not ungraceful, the long and rather u])right sound-hole, but 
well cut; the grand scroll, cut aU in a hurry,;but noble. 93 is a lit- 
tle the grander in make I think; the purfling being set a hair's- 
breadth further in, the scroll magnificent; but observe the haste 
— the deep gague-marks on the side of the scroll; here is already 
an indication of the slovenliness to come; varnish a lovely orange, 
wood beautiful; two cracks in the belly, one from the chin-mark 
to the sound-hole. 94 is a violin of the same make, and without 
a single crack; the scroll is not quite so grandiose as 93, but the 
rest incomparable; the belly pure and beautiful, the back a pict- 
ure. There is nothing in the room that equals in picturesque- 
ness the colors of this magnificent piece; time and fair-play 
have worn it thus; first, there is a narrow irregular line of wear, 
caused by the hand in shifting, next comes a sheet of ruby varn- 
ish, with no wear to speak of; then an irregular piece is worn 
out the size of a sixpence; then more varnish; then, from the 
center downward, a grand wear, the size and shape of a large 
curving pear; this ends in a broad zigzag ribbon of varnish, and 
then comes the bare M'ood caused by the friction in playing, but 
higher up to the left a score of great bold chips. It is the very 
beau-ideal of the red Cremona violin, adorned, not injured, by a 
century's fair wear. No. 95 is a roughish specimen of the same 
epoch, not so brilliant, but with its own charm. Here the gague- 
marks of impatience are to be seen on the very border, and I 
should have expected to see the stiff-throated scroll, for it be- 
longs to this form. 

The next epoch is rougher still, and is generally, but not al- 
ways higher built, with a stiff-throated scroll, and a stiff, quaint 
sound-hole that is the delight of connoisseurs; and such is the 
force of genius that I believe in our secret hearts we love these 
impudent fiddles best — they are so fuU of chic. After that, he 
abuses the patience of his admirers; makes his fiddles of a pre- 
posterous height, with sound-holes long enough for a tenor;^ but, 
worst of all, indifferent wood and downright bad varnish — 
varnish worthy only of the Guadagnini tribe, and not laid on by 
the method of his contemporaries. Indeed, I sadly fear it was 
this great man who, by his ill example in 1740-45, kUled the 
varnish of Cremona, Thus — to show the range of the subject — 
out of five distinct epochs in the work of this extraordinary man 
we have only one and a half, so to speak, represented even in 
this noble collection — the greatest by far the world has ever 
seen. But I hope to see all those gaps filled, and also to see in 
the collection a Stradiuarius violin of that kind I call the dol- 
phin-backed. This is a mere matter of picturesque, wear. When 
a red Stradiuarius violin is made of soft velvety wood, and the 
varnish is just half worn off the back in a rough triangular form, 
that produces a certain beauty of light and shade which is in 
my opinion the ne plus ultra. These violins are rare. I never 
had but two in my life. A very obliging dealer, who knows my 
views, has promised his co-operation, and I think England, 
which cuts at present rather too poor a figure in respect of this 
maker, wiU add a dolphin-backed Stradiuarius to the collection 
before it is dispersed. 



READIANA. 37 

"h CauLO BergonZI, if you go by gauging and purfling, is of 
course an inferior make to the Amati; but, if that is to be the 
line of reasoning, he is superior to Joseph Guarnerius. We 
ought to be in one story; if Joseph Guarnerius is the second 
maker of C/remona, it follows tliat Carlo Bergonzi is the third. 
Fine size, reasonable outline, flat and even model, good wood, 
work, and varnish, and an indescribable air of grandeur and im- 
portance. He is quite as rare as Joseph Guarnerius. Twenty- 
five years ago I ransacked Europe for him — for he is a maker I 
always loved — and I could obtain but few. No. 109 was one of 
them, and the most remarkable, take it altogether. In this one 
case he has really set himself to copy Stradiuarius. He,has com- 
posed his purfling in the same proportions, which was not at all 
his habit. He has copied the sound-hole closely, and has even 
imitated that great man's freak of delicately hollowing out the 
lower wood-work of the sound-hole. The varnish of this violin 
is as fine in color as any pale Stradiuarius in the world, and far 
superior in body to most of them; but that is merely owing to its 
rare preservation. Most of these pale Stradiuariuses, and es- 
pecially Mrs. Jay's and No. 86, had once varnish on them as 
beautiful as is now on this chef d'oeuvre of Carlo Bergonzi. 

Monsieur Fetis having described Michael Angelo Bei-gouzi as a 
pupil of Stradiuarius, and English writers having blindly fol- 
lowed him, this seems a fit place to correct that erroi*. Michael 
Angelo Bergonzi Avas the son of Carlo; began to work after the 
death of Stradiuarius, and imitated nobody but his father — and. 
him vilely. His corners are not corners, but peaks. See them 
once, you never forget them; but you pray Heaven you may 
never see them again. His ticket nins, "Michael Angelo Ber- 
gonzi figlio di Carlo, fece nel Cremona," from 1750 to 1780. Of 
Nicholas, son of Michael Angelo Bergonzi, I have a ticket dated 
1796, but he doubtless began before that, and worked till 1830. 
He lived till 1838, was well known to Tarisio, and it is from him 
alone we have learned the house Stradiuarius lived in. There is 
a tenor by Michael Angelo Bergonzi to be seen at Mr. Cox, the 
picture dealer, Pall-mall, and one by Nicholas, in Mr. Chanot's 
shop, in Ward our street. Neither of these Bergonzi knew how 
their own progenitor varnished any more than my housemaid 
does. 

Stainer, a mixed maker. He went to Cremona too late to 
unlearn his German style, but he moderated it, and does not 
scoop so badly as his successors. The model of his tenor, es- 
pecially the back, is very fine. The peculiar defect of it is that 
it is purfled too near the border, which always gives meanness. 
This is the more unfortunate, that really he was freer from this 
defect than his imitators. He learned to varnish in Cremona, 
but his varnish is generally paler than the native Cremonese. 
This tenor is exceptional; it has a rose-colored varnish that 
nothing can surpass. It is lovely. 

, Sanctus Seraphin.— This is a true Venetian maker. The 
Venetian bom was always half -Cremonese, half-German. In 
this bass, which is his uniform style, you see a complete mastery 
of the knife and the gauge. Neither the Stradiuarius nor the 



38 READIANA, 

Amati ever purfled a bass more finely, and, to tell the truth, 
rarely so finely. But oh! the miserable scroll, tlie abominable 
sound-hole! Here he shows the cloven foot, and is more Ger- 
man than Stainer. Uniformity was never carried so far as by 
this natty workman; one violin exactly like the next; one bass 
the image of its predecessor. His varnish never varies. It is 
always slightly opaque. This is observed in his violins, but it 
escape? detection in his basses, because it is but slight, after all, 
and the wonderful wood he put into his basses shines through 
that slight defect and hides it from all but practiced eyes, lie 
had purchased a tree or a very large log of it; for this is the 
third bass I have seen of this wonderful wood. Nowadays you 
might cut down a forest of sycamore and not match it; those 
veteran trees are all gone. He has a feature all to himself; his 
violins have his initials in ebony let into the belly under the 
broad part of the tail-piece. This natty Venetian is the only old 
violin maker I know who could write well. The others bungle 
that part of the date they are obliged to write in the tickets. 
This one writes it in a hand like copper plate, whence I suspect 
he was himseK the engraver of his ticket, which is unique. It 
is four times the size of a Cremonese ticket, and has a scroll 
border composed thus: — The sides of a parallelogram are created 
by four solid lines like sound-holes; these are united at the sides 
by two leaves and at the center by two shells. Another serpen- 
tine line is then coiled all round them at short intervals, and 
within the parallelogram the ticket is printed: — 

Satictus Seraphin Utiuensis, 
Fecit Venetiis, anno 17 — . 

The Mighty Venetian. — I come now to a truly remarkable 
piece, a basso di canaera that comes modestly into the room with- 
out a name, yet there is nothing except No. 91 that sends such a 
thrill through the true connoisseur. The outline is grotesque 
but original, the model full and swelling but not bumpy, the 
wood detestable; the back is hare-wood, but without a vestige 
of figure; so it might just as well be elm; the belly, instead of 
being made of mountain deal grown on the sunny side of the 
Alps, is a piece of house-timber. Now these materials would 
kill any other maker; yet this mighty bass stands its ground. 
Observe the fiber of the belly; here is the deepest red varnish in 
the room, and laid on with an enormous brush. Can you see the 
fiber through the thin varnish of Sanctus Seraphin as plainly as 
you can see the fiber through this varnish laid on as thick as 
paint? So much for clearness. Now for color. Let the student 
stand before this bass, get the varnish into his mind, and then 
walk rapidly to any other instrument in the room he has previ- 
ously determined to compare with il. This will be a revelation 
to him if he has eyes in his head. 

And this miracle comes in without a name, and, therefore, is 
passed over by all the sham judges. And why does it come 
without a name? I hear a French dealer advised those 
who framed the catalogue. But the fact is that if a man 
Quce narrows his mind to three or tour inakers, and imagines 



READIANA. 39 

they monopolize excellence, he never can be a judge of old 
instruments, the studj' is so wide and his mind artificially nar- 
rowed. Example of tbis false method: Mr. Falconer sends in a 
bass, which he calls Andreas Guarnerius. An adviser does not 
see that, and suggests " probably by Amati." Now there is no 
such thing as " probably hy Araati,"'any more than there is prob- 
ably the sun or the moon. That bass is by David Tecchler of 
Rome; but it is a masterpiece; and so, because lie has done better 
than usual, the poor devil is to be robbed of his credit, and it is 
to be given, first to one maker who is in the ring and then to 
another icho is in the ring. The basso di camera, which not 
being in the ring, comes without a name, is by Domenico Mon- 
tagnana, of Venice, the greatest maker of basses in all Venice or 
Cremona except one. If this bass bad only a decent piece of 
wood at the back, it would extinguish all the other basses. But 
we can remedy that defect. Basses by this maker exist with 
fine wood. Mr. Hart, senior, sold one some twenty years ago 
with yellow varuisli, and wood striped like a tiger's back. 
Should these lines meet the eye of the purchaser, I shall feel 
grateful if he will commvmicate with me thereupon. 

I come now to the last of the Goths, thus catalogued, No. 100, 
" ascribed to Guarnerius. Probably by Storioni." 

Lorenzo Storioni is a maker who began to work at Cremona 
about 1780. He has a good model but wretched spirit varnish. 
Violin No. lnO is something much better. It is a violin made 
befoi-e 1760 by Laudolfo of Milan. He is a maker well known 
to experienced dealers who can take their minds out of tiie ring, 
but, as the writers seem a little confused, and talk of two 
Lauduiphs, a Charles and a Ferdinand, I may as well say here 
that the two are one. This is the true ticket: 

Carolus Ferdinandus Landnlpbus, 
fecit Mediolani in via S. Mar- 
garitas, anno, 1756. 

Stiff inner-bought really something like Joseph Guarnerius, 
but all the rest quite unlike: scroll very mean, varnish good; 
and sometimes very fine. Mr. Moore's in point of varnish, is a 
fine specimen. It has a deeper, nobler tint than usual. This 
maker is very interesting, on account of his being absolutely tlie 
last Italian who used the glorioiis varnish of Cremona. It died 
first at Cremona; lingered a year or two more at Venice; Lan- 
dolfo retained it at Milan till 1760, and with him it ended. 

In my next and last article I will deal with the varnioh of 
Cremona, as illustrated by No. 91 and other specimens, and will 
enable the curious to revive that lost art if they choose. 



FOURTH LETTER. 

August ^-i. St, 1873. 

The fiddles of Cremona gained their reputation by superior 

tone, but tliey hold it now mainly by their beauty. For thirty 

years past violins have been ma-le equal in model to the chef- 

iVveuvres of Cremona, and fitronger in wood than Stradiuarius, 



40 READIANA. 

and more scientific than Guarnei'ius in the thicknesses. This class 
of violins is hideous, but has one quality in perfection — Power- 
whilst the masterpieces of Cremona eclipse every new violin in 
sweetness, oiliness, crispness, and volume of tone as distinct from 
loudness. Age has dried their vegetable juices, making the car- 
cass much lighter than that of a new violin, and those light 
dry frames vibrate at a touch. 

But M, Fetis goes too far when he intimates that Stradiuarius 
is louder as well as sweeter than Lupot, Gand, or Bernardel. 
Take a hundred violins by Stradiuarius and open them; you find 
about ninety -five patched in the center with new wood. The 
connecting link is a sheet of glue. And is glue a fine resonant 
substance? And are the glue and the new wood of John 
Bull and Jean Crapaud transmogrified into the wood of Stradi- 
uarius by merely- sticking on to it ? Is it not extravagant to quote 
patched violins as beyond rivalry in all the qualities of sound? 
How can they be the loudest, when the center of the sound- 
board is a mere sandwich, composed of the maker's thin wood, 
a buttering of glue, and a huge slice of new vpood ? 

Joseph Guarnerius has plenty of wood; but his thicknesses are 
not always so scientific as those of the best modern fiddle- 
makers; so that even he can be rivaled in power by a new violin, 
though not in richness and sweetness. Consider, then, these two 
concurrent phenomena, that for twenty-five years new violins, 
have been better made for sound than they ever were made in 
this world, yet old Cremona violins have nearly doubled in price, 
and you will divine, as the truth is, that old fiddles are not 
bought by the ear alone. I will add that 100 years ago, when the 
violins of Brescia and of Sti'adiuarius and Guarnerius were the 
only well-modeled violins, they were really bought by the ear, 
and the prices were moderate. Now they are in reality bought 
by the eye, and the price is enormous. The reason is that their 
tone is good but their appearance inimitable; because the makers 
chose fine wood and laid on a varnish highly colored, yet clear 
as crystal, with this strange property — it becomes far more 
beautiful by time and usage: it wears softly away, or chips 
boldly away, in such forms as to make the whole violin pictur- 
esque, beautiful, various, and curious. 

To approach the same conclusion by a different road — No. 94 
is a violin, whose picturesque beauty I have described already; 
twenty-five years ago Mr. Plowden gave £450 for it. It is now, 
I suppose, worth £500. Well, knock that violin down and crack 
it in two places, it will sink that moment to the value of the 
" violon du diable," and be worth £350. But collect twenty 
amateurs all ready to buy it, and, instead of cracking it, dip it 
into a jar of spirits and wash the varnish off. Not one of those 
customers will give you above £40 for it; nor would it in reality 
be worth quite so much in the market. Take another example. 
There is a beautiful and very perfect violin by Stradiuarius, 
which the Timefi, in an article on these instruments, calls La 
Messie. These leading journals have })rivate information on 
every subject, even grammar. I prefer to call it — after the very 
intelligent man to whom we owe the sight of it— the VuUlaume 



READIANA. 41 

Stradiuarius. Well, the Vuillaume Stradiuarius is worth, as 
times go, £600 at least. Wash off the varnish, it would be worth 
£35; because unlike No. 94, it has one little crack. Asa further 
illustration that violins are heard by the eye, let me remind 
your readers of the high prices at which numberless copies of 
the old makers were sold in Paris for many years. The inven- 
tors of this art undertook to deliver a new violin, that in usage 
and color of the worn parts should be exactly like an old and 
worn violin of some favorite mnker. Now, to do this with white 
wood was impossible; so the wood was baked in the oven or 
colored yellow with the smoke of sulphuric acid, or so forth, to 
give it the color of age; but these processes kill the wood as a 
vehicle of sound; and these copies were, and are, the worst 
musical instruments Europe has created in this century; and 
bad as they are at starting, they get worse every year of their un- 
tuneful existence: yet, because they flattered the eye with some- 
thing like the light and shade and jjicturesqueness of the Cre- 
mona violin, these pseudo-antiques, though illimitable in num- 
ber, sold like wildfire; and hundreds of self-deceivers heard 
them by the eye, and fancied these tinpots sounded divinely. 
The hideous red violins of Bernadel, Gand , and an English maker 
or two, are a reaction against those copies; they are made hon- 
estly with white wood, and they will, at all events, improve in 
sound every year and every decade. It comes to this, then, 
that the varnish of Cremona, as operated on by time and usage, 
has an inimitable beauty, and we pay a high price for it in sec- 
ond-class makers, and an enormous price in a fine Stradiuarius 
or Joseph Guarnerius. No wonder, then, that many violin- 
makers have tried hard to discover the secret of this varnisli; 
many chemists have given days and nights of anxious study to 
it. ' More than once, even in my time, hopes have run high, but 
only to fall again. Some have even cried Eureka! to the public; 
but the moment others looked at the discovery and compared it 
with the real thing. " inextinguishable laughter shook the 
skies." At last despair has succeeded to all that energetic study, 
and the varnish of Cremona is sullenly give up as a lost art. 

I have heard and read a great deal about it, and I think I can 
state the principal theories briefly, but ii.".elligibly. 

1. It used to be stoutly maintained that the basis was amber; 
that these old Italians had the art of infusing amber without \ 
impairing its transparency; once fused by dry heat, it could be 
l)oiled into a varnish with oil and spirit of turpentine, and com- 
bined with transparent j'et lasting colors, To convince me, 
they used to rub the worn part of a Cremona with their sleeves, 
and then put the fiddle to tlieir noses, and smell amber. Then I, 
burning with love of knowledge, used to rub the fiddle very 
hard and whip it to my nose, and not smell amber. But that 
might arise in some measure from there not being any amber 
there to smell. (N. B. — These amber-seeking worthies never 
rubbed the colored varnish on an old violin. Yet their theory 
had placed amber there.) 

2. That time does it all. The violins of Stradiuarius were 
raw, crude things at starting, and the varnish rather opaque. 



42 READIANA 

3. Two or three had the courage to say it was spirit- varnish, 
and alleged in proof that if you drop a drop of alcohol on a 
Stradiuarius. it tears the varnish off as it runs. 

4. The far more prevalent notion was that it is an oil varnish, 
in support of which they pointed to the rich appearance of what 
they called the bare wood, and contrasted the miserable hungry 
appearance of the wood in all old violins known tote spirit- 
varnished — for instance, Nicholas Gagliano, of Naplas, and 
Jean Baptiste Guadagnini, of Piacenza, Italian makers contem- 
porary with Joseph Guarnerius. 

5. That the secret has been lost by adulteration. The old Cre- 
monese and Venetians got pure and sovereign gums, that have 
retired from commerce. 

Now, as to theory No. 1. — Surely amber is too dear a gum :and 
too impracticable for two hundred fiddle-makers to have used 
in Italy. Till fused by dry heat it is no more soluble in varnish 
than quartz is; and who can fuse it? Copal is inclined to 
melt, but amber to burn, to catch fire, to do anything but melt. 
Put the two gums to a lighted candle, you will then appreciate 
the difference. I tried more than one chemist in the fusing of 
amber; it came out of their hands a dark brown opaque sub- 
stance, rather burnt than fused. Wlieu really fused it is a dark 
olive green, as clear as crystal. Yet I never knew but one man 
who could bring it to this, and he had special machinery, in- 
vented by himself, for it; in spite of which he nearly burned down 
his house at it one day. I believe the whole amber theory comes 
out of a verbal equivoque; the varnish of tlie Amati was called 
amber to mark its rich color, and your a jjriori reasoners went 
off on that, forgetting that amber must be an inch thick to ex- 
hibit the color of amber. By such reasoning as this Mr. Davitl- 
son, in a book of great general merit, is misled so far .as to put 
down powdered glass for an ingredient in Cremona varnish. 
Mark the logic. Glass in a sheet is transparent, so if you re- 
duce it to powder it will add transparency to varnish. Im- 
posed on by this chimera, he actually puts powdered glass, an 
opaque and insoluble sediment, into four receipts for Ci'emona 
varnish. 

But the theories 2, 3, 4, 5 have all a good deal of truth in them ; 
their fault is that they are too narrow, and too blind to the truth 
of each other. In tins as in every seientijk iuquiri/, the true solu- 
tion is that irJiicti reconciles all the truths tJuit seem at variance. 

The way to discover a lost art, once practiced with variations 
by a hundred peojjle, is to examine very closely the most brill- 
iant specimen, tiie most characteristic specimen, and, indeed, 
the most extravagant specimen — if j^ou can find one. I took 
that way. and I found in the chippiest varnisii of Stradiuarius, 
viz., his dark red varnish, the key to all the varnish of Cremona, 
red or yellow. (N. B. — The yellow always beat me dead, till I 
got to it by tliis detour.) There is no specimen in the collection 
of this red varnish so violent as I have seen; but Mr. Pawle's 
bass. No. 187, wUl do. Please walk with me up to the back oi 
iMiat bass, and let us disregard all hyix>tlieses and theories, and 



READIANA. 43 

use our eyes. What do we see before us ? A bass with red var- 
nish that chips veiy readily off what people call the bare wood. 
But never mind what tliese echoes of echoes call it. What is it V 
It is not bare wood. Bare wood turns a dirty brown with age. 
This is a rich and lovely yellow. By its color and its glassy 
gloss, acd by disbeUeving what echoes say and trusting only 
to our eyes, we may see at a glance it is not bare wood, but 
highly varnished wood. This varnisb is evidently oil, and con- 
tains a gum. Allowing for the tendency of oil to run into the 
wood, I should say four coats of oil varnish, and this they call 
the bare wood. We have now discovered the first process: a 
clear od. varnish laid on the white wood with some trans- 
parent gum not high colored. Now proceed a step further; 
the red and chippy varnisb, what is that? " Oh, that is a var- 
nish of the same quality but another color," say the theorists 
No. 4. "How do you know?" say I. "It is self-evident. 
Would a man begin with oil varnish and then go into spirit var- 
nish ?" IS their reply. Now observe, this is not humble observation, 
it is only rational preconception. But if discovery has an enemy 
in the human mind that enemy is pi-econception. Let us then trust 
only to humble observation. Here is a clear varnish without the 
ghost of a chip in itstiature; and upon it is a red varnish that is all 
chip. Does that look as if the two varnishes were homogeneous ? 
Is chip precisely the same thing as no chip? If homogeneous, 
there would be chemical affinity between the two. But this ex- 
treme readiness of the red varnish to chip away from the clear 
marks a defect of chemical affinity between tiie two. Why, if 
you were to put your thumb nail against that /ed varnish, a lit- 
tle piece would come away directly. This is not so in any 
known case of oil upon oil. Take old Forster, for instance; he 
begins with clear oil varnish; then on that he puts a distinct oil 
varnish with the color and transparency of pea-soup. You will 
not get his pea-soup to chip oflE his cleai varnish in a hurry. 
There is a baes by William Forster in the collection a hundred 
years old; but the wear is confined to the places where the top 
varnish must go in a played bass. Everywhere else his pea-soup 
sticks tight to his clear varnish, being oil upon oil. 

Now, take a perfectly distinct line of observation. In var- 
nishes oil is a diluent of color. It is not in the power of man to 
charge an oU varnish with color so liighly as the top varnish 
of Mr, Pawle's bass is charged. And it must be remembered 
that the clear varnish below has filled all the pores of the wood; 
tlierefore the diluent cannot escape into the wood, and so leave 
the color undiluted; if that red varnish was ever oil varnish, 
every particle of the oil inust be there still. What, in that 
mere film so crammed with color? Never! Nor yet in the 
top varnish of the Spanish bass, which is thinner still, yet 
more charged with color than any topaz of twice the thickness. 
This, then, is how Antonius Stradiuarius vaniished Mr. Pawle's 
bass. He began with three or four coats of oil varnish contain- 
ing some common gum. He then laid on several coats of red 
varnish, made by simply dissolving some fine red unadulterated 
^m in spirit ; the ppirit evaporated and left pure gum lying on 



44 READIANA 

a rich oil varnish, from which it chips by its dry nature and its 
utter want of chemical affinity to the substratum. On the 
Spanish bass Stradiuarius put not more, I think, than two coats 
of oil rarnish, and tben a spirit varnish consisting of a different 
gum, less chippy, but even more tender and wearable than the 
red. Now take this key all round the room, and you will find 
there is not a lock it wiU not open. Look at the varnish on the 
back of the " violon du diable," as it is called. There is the top 
varnish with all the fire of a topaz and far more color ; for sUce' 
the deepest topaz to that thinness, it would pale before that var- 
nish. And why? 1st. Because this is no oily dilution ; it is a 
divine unadulterated gum, left there undiluted by evaporation 
of the spirituous vehicle. 2d. Because this varnish is a jewel 
with the advantage of a foil behind it ; that foil is the fine oil 
varnish underneath. The purest specimen of Stradiuarius's red 
varnish in the room is, perhaps, Mr. Fountaine's kit. Look at 
the back of it by the light of these remarks. What can be plainer 
than the clear oil varnish with not the ghost of a chip in it, 
and the glossy top varnish so charged with color, and so ready 
to chip from the varnish below, for want of chemical affinity be- 
tween the varnishes ? The basso di camera by Montagnana is 
the same thing. See the bold wear on the^sack reveaUng the 
heterogeneous varnish below the red. They are all the same 
thing. The palest violins of Stradiuarius and Amati are much 
older and harder worn than Mr. Pawle's bass, and the top varnish 
not of a chippy character ; yet look at them closely by the light of 
these remarks, and you shaU find one or two phenomena-either the 
tender top varnish has all been worn away, and so there is nothing 
to be inferred one way or other, or else there are flakes of it left, 
and, if so, these flakes, however thin, shall always betray, by the 
superior vividness of their color to the color of the subjacent oil 
varnish, that they are not oil varnish, but pure gum left thereby 
evaporating spirit on a foil of beautiful oil varnish. Take Mrs. 
Jay's Amatise Stradiuarius; on the back of that violin toward 
the top there is a mere flake of top varnish left by itself; all 
round it is nothing left but the bottom varnish. That fragment 
of top varnish is a film tliinner than gold leaf; yet look at its 
Intensity; it lies on the fine old varnish like fixed hghtning, it is 
80 vivid. It is just as distinct from the oil varnish as is the red 
varnish of the kit. Examine the Duke of Cambridge's violin, 
or any other Cremona instrument in the whole world you like; 
it is always the same thing, though not so self-evident as in 
the red and chippy varnishes. The Vuillaume Stradiuarius, not 
being worn, does not assist us in this particular line of argu- 
ment; but it does not contradict us. Indeed, there are a few 
little chips in the top varnish of the back, and they reveal a 
heterogeneous varnish below, with its rich yellow color like the 
bottom varnish of the Pawle bass. Moreover, if you look at 
the top varnish closely you shall see what you never see in a new- 
violin of our day; not a vulgar glare upon the surface, but a 
gentle inward fire. Now that inward fire, I assure you, is mainly 
caused by the oil varnish below; the orange vamisb above has a 
heterogeneous foil below. That inward glow is characteristic of 



READIANA. 45 

all foils. If you could see the Vuillaume Stradiuarius at uight 
and move it about in the light of a candle, you would be amazed 
at the fire of the foil and the refraction of light. 

Thus, then, it is. The unlucky phrase " varnish of Cremona" 
has weakened men's povpers of observation by fixing a precon- 
ceived notion that the varnish must be all one thing. The Cre- 
monia mrnish is not variiisli, hut two varnishes ; and those var- 
nishes always heterogeneous : that is to say, first thepores of the 
ivood are filled and the grain shown up by one, by two, by three, 
and sometimes, though rarely, by four coats of fine oil varnish 
unth some common but clear gum in solution. Tlien upon this oil 
x^arnish, when dry, is laid a heterogeneous varnish, viz., a solu- 
tion in spirit of some sovereign, high colored, pellucid, and, above 
all, tender gum. Gum-lac, which for forty years has been the 
mainstay of violin makers, must never be used; not one atom of 
it. That vile, flinty gum killed varnish at Naples and Piacenza 
a hundred and forty yeai-s ago, as it kills varnish now. Old 
Cremona shunned it, and whoever employs a grain of it, com- 
mits willful suicide as a Cremonese varnisher. It will not wear; 
it will not chip; it is in every respect the opposite of the Cremona 
gums. Avoid it utterly, or fail hopelessly, asall varnishershave 
failed since that fatal gum came in. The deep red varnish of 
Cremona is pure dragon's blood; not the cake, the stick, the 
filthy trash, which, in this sinful and adulterating generation, is 
retailed under that name, but the tear of dragon's blood, little 
lumps deeper in color than a carbuncle, clear as crystal, and 
fiery as a ruby. Unadulterated dragon's blood does not exist in 
commerce west of Temple-bar; but you can get it by groping in 
the City as hard as Diogenes had to grope for an honest man in 
a much less knavish town than London. The yellow varnish is 
the unadulterated tear of another gum, retailed in a cake like 
dragon's blood, and as great a fraud. All cakes and sticks pre- 
sented to you in commerce as gums are audacious swindles. A 
true gum is the tear of a tree. For the yellow tear, as for the red, 
grope the City harder than Diogenes. The orange varnish of 
Peter Guarnerius and Stradiuarius is only a mixture of theee 
two genuine gums. Even the milder reds of Stradiuarius are 
slightly reduced with the yellow gum. The Montagnana bass 
and No. 94 are pure dragon s blood mellowed down by time and 
exposure only. 

A violin varnished as I have indicated will look a little better 
than other new violins from the first; the back will look nearly 
as well as the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, but not quite. The belly 
will look a little better if properly prepared; will show the fiber 
of the deal better. But its principal merit is, that like the 
violins of Cremona, it will vastly improve in beauty if much ex- 
posed and persistently played. And that improvement will be 
rapid, because the tender top varnish will wear away from the 
oily substratum four times as quickly as any vulgar varnish of 
the day will chip or wear. We cannot do what Stradiuarius 
could not do — give to a new violin the peculiar beauty, that 
comes to heterogenous varnishes of Cremona from age and hon 
est wear; but, on the other hand, it is a mistake to suppose that 



46 READIANA. 

one hundred years are required to develop the beauty of any 
Cremona varnishes, old or nevs^. The ordinary wear of a cen- 
tury cannot be condensed into one year or five, but it can be 
condensed into twenty years. Any young amateur may live to 
play on a magnificent Cremoaa made for himself, if he has the 
enthusiasm to follow my directions. Choose the richest and 
finest wood; liave the violin made after the pattern of a rough 
Joseph Guarnerius; then you need not sand-paper the back, sides, 
or head, for sand-paper is a great enemy to varnish; it drives 
more wood-dust into the pores than you can blow out. If you 
sand-paper the belly, sponge that finer dust out, as far as 
possible, and varnish when dry. That will do no harm, and 
throw up the fiber. Make your own linseed oil — the linseed oil 
of commerce is adulterated with animal oil and fish oil, which 
are non-drying oils — and varnish as I have indicated above, and 
when the violin is strung treat it regularly with a view to fast 
wear; let it hang up in a warm place, exposed to dry air, night 
and day. Never let it be shut up in a case except for trans- 
port. Lend it for months to the leader of an orchestra. Look after 
it, and see that it is constantly played and constantly exposed 
to dry air all about it. Never clean it, never touch it with a 
silk handkerchief. In twenty years your heterogeneous var- 
nishes will have parted company in many places. The back will 
be worn quite picturesque; the belly will look as old as Joseph 
Guarnerius; there will be a delicate film on the surface of the 
grand red varnish laiellowed by exposure, and a marvelous fire 
below. In a word, you will have a glorious Cremona fiddle. 
Do you aspire to do more, and to make a downright old Cre- 
mona violin? Then, my young friend, you must treat yourself 
as well as the violin; you must not smoke all day, nor the last 
thing at night; you must never take a dram before dinner and 
call it bitters; you must be as true to your spouse as ever you 
can, and, in a word, live moderately, and cultivate good temper 
and avoid great wi'ath. By these means, Deo i^olente, you shall 
live to see the violin that was made for you and varnished by 
my receipt, as old and worn and beautiful a Cremona as the 
Joseph Guarnerius No. 94. beyond which nothing can go. 

To show the fiddle-maker what may be gained by using as lit- 
tle sand-paper as possible, let him buy a little of Maunder's 
palest copal varnish; then let him put a piece of deal on his 
bench and take a few shavings off it with a carpenter's plane. 
Let him lay his varnish directly on the wood so planed. It will 
have a fire and a beauty he will never quite attain to by scrap- 
ing, sand-papering, and then varnishing the same wood with the 
same varnish. And this applies to hare-wood as well as deal. 
The back of the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, which is the finest 
part, has clearly not been sand-papered in places, so probably 
not at all. Wherever it is possible, varnish after cold steel, at 
all events in imitating the Cremonese, and especially Joseph 
Guarnerius. These, however, are minor details, which I have 
only inserted, because I foresee that I may be unable to return to 
this subject in writing, though I shall be very happy to talk 
about it at my own place to any one who really cares about the 

. \ 



EEADIANA. 47 

matter. However, it is not every day one can restore a lost art 
to the world; and I hope that, and my anxiety not to do it by 
halves, will excuse this prolix article. 

CHARLES READ. 



THE STORY OF THE BOAT RACE OF 1872. 
To THE Editor of the " Obsekver." 

This great annual race has become a national event. The 
rival crews are watched by a thousand keen eyes from the mo- 
ment they appear on the Thames; their trials against time or 
scratch crews are noted and reported to the world; criticism and 
speculation are unintermittent, and the Press prints two hundred 
volumes about the race before ever it is run. 

When the day comes England suspends her liberties for an 
hour or two, makes her police her legislators; and her river, 
though by law a highway, becomes a race course; passengers 
aud commerce are both swept off it not to spoil sacred sport; 
London poui's out her myriads; the country flows in to meet 
them; the roads are clogged with carriages and pedestrians all 
making for the river; its banks on both sides are blackened by 
riu unbroken multitude five miles long; on all the bridges that 
command the race people hang and cluster like swarming bees; 
windows, seats, balconies, are crammed, all glowing with bright 
colors (blue predominating), and sparkling Vi'ith brigliter eyes of 
the excited fair ones. 

The two crews battle over the long course under one continu- 
ous roar of a ragmg multitude. At last — and often after fluctu- 
ations in the race that drive the crowd all but mad — there is a 
puff of smoke, a loud report, one boat has won, tiiough both de- 
serve; and the victors are the true kings of all that mighty throng; 
in tnat hour the Premier of England, the Priuiate, the'poet, the 
orai^or, the philosopher of his age, v.'ould wallc past unheeded if 
the Stroke oar of the victorious boat stood anywhere near. 

To cynics and sedentary students all this seems childish, and 
looks like paying to muscle a homage that is never given by ac- 
clamation to genius and virtue. 

But, as usual, the public is not far wrong; the triumph, though 
loud, is evanescent, and much has been done aud endured to 
earn it. No glutton, no wiue-bibber, no man of impure life 
could live through that great jjuU; each, victor (tbatinuit venere 
et vino, sudavit ct alsif. 

The captain of the winning boat has taught Government a les- 
son; for in selecting his men he takes care of Honor, and does 
not talce care of Dowb, for that would be to throw the race away 
upon dry land; but tlie public enthusiasm rests on broader and 
more obvious grounds llian these. Every nation lias a right to 
admire its own fraitis in individuals, when those trails are honor- 
able and even innocent. England is not bound to admire those 
atJjletes, who every now and then proclaim their nationality by 
drinking a quart of ginright off for a wager; but we are a nation 



48 READIANA. 

great upon the water, and great at racing, and we have a right to 
admire these men, who combine the two things to perfection. 
This is the king of races, for it is run by the King of animals 
working, after his kind, by combination, and with a concert so 
strong, yet delicate, that for once it eclipses machinery. But, 
above all, here is an example, not only of strength, wind, 
spirit, and pluck indomitable, but of pure aud crystal honor. 
Foot races and horse races have been often sold, and the betters 
betrayed; but this race never — and it never will be. Here, 
from first to last, all is open, because all is fair and glorious 
as the kindred daylight it courts. We hear of shivering stable 
boys sent out on a frosty morning to try race horses on the 
sly, and so giv^e the proprietors private knowledge to use 
in betting. Sometimes these early worms have been pre- 
ceded by earlier ones, who are watching behind a hedge. 
Then shall the trainer wliisper one of the boys to hold in 
the faster horse, and so enact a profitable lie. Not so the Uni- 
vesrity crews; they make trials in broad daylight for their own 
information; and those trials are always faithful. The race is 
pure, is and a strong corrective annually administered to the 
malpractices of racing. And so our two great fountains of 
learning are one fount of honor, God be thanked for it! So the 
people do well to roar their applause, and every nobleman who 
runs horses may be proud to take for his example these high- 
spirited gentlemen, who nobly run a nobler creature, for they 
run themselves. The recent feature of this great race has been 
the recovery of Cambridge in 1870 and 1871, after nine successive 
defeats; defeats the more remarkable that up to 1861, Oxford 
was behind her in the number of victories. The main cause of 
a result so peculiar was tliat system of rowing Oxford had in- 
vented and perfected. The true Oxford stroke is slow in the 
water but swift in the air; the rower goes well forward, drops 
his oar clean into the water, goes well backward, and makes his 
stroke, but, this done, comes swiftly forward all of apiece, hands 
foremost. Thus, though a slow stroke, it is a very busy one. 
Add to this a clean feather, and a high sweep of the oars to 
avoid rough water, and you have the true Oxford stroke, which 
is simply the perfection of rowing, and can, of course, be de- 
feated by superior strength or bottom; but, ca'teris paribxis, is 
almost sure to win. 

Nine defeats were endured by Cambridge with a fortitude, a 
patience, and a temper that won every heart, and in 1870 she 
reaped her reward. She sent uj) a crew, led by Mr. Goldie — who 
bad been defeated the year before by Darbishire"s Oxford 
eight — and coached by Mr. Morrison. This Cambridge crew 
pulled the Oxford stroke, or nearly, di'ove Oxford in the race to 
a faster stroke that does not suit her, and won the race with 
something to spare, though stuck to indomitably by Darbishire 
and an inferior crew. In 1871 Oxford sent up a lieavy crew, 
with plenty of apparent strength, but not the ])vecision and form 
of Mr. Goldie's eight. Cambridge took the lead and kept it. 

This year Oxford ivas rather unlucky in advance. The city 
was circumnavigable by little ships, and you might have tacked 



READIANA. 40 

an Indiaman in Magdalen College meadow; but this was unfavor- 
able to eight-oar practice. Then Mr. Lesley, the stroke, sprained 
his side, and resigned his post to Mr. Houblon, a very elegant 
oarsman, but one who pulls a quick stroke, not healthy to Ox- 
ford on Father Thames his bosom. Then their boat was found 
to be not so lively as the Cambridge boat built by Clasper. A 
new boat was ordered, and slie proved worse in another way 
than Salter's. In a word, Oxford came to the scratch to day 
with a good stiff boat, not lively, with 201b. more dead weight 
inside the coxswain's jacket, and with a vast deal of pluck and 
not a little Hemiplegia. The betting was five to two against her. 

Five minutes before the rivals came out, it was snowing so 
hard that the race bade fair to be invisible. I shall not describe 
the snow, nor any of the atmospheric horrors' that made the 
whole business purgatory instead of pleasure. 1 take a milder 
revenge; I only curse them. 

Putney roared, and out came the Dark Blue crew; they looked 
strong and wiry, and likelj' to be troublesome attendants. An- 
other roar, and out came the Light Blue. So long as the boats 
were stationary, one looked as likely as the other to win. 

They started. Houblon took it rather easy at first; and Cam- 
bridge obtained a lead directly, and at the Soap Works was half 
a length ahead. This was reduced by Mr. Hall's excellent steer- 
ing a foot or two by the time they shot Hammersmith Bridge. 
As the boats neared Chiswick Eyot, where many a race has 
changed, Oxford gradually reduced the lead to a foot or two; 
and if this could have been done with the old, steady, much- 
enduring stroke, 1 would not have given much for the leading 
boat's chance. But it was achieved by a stroke of full thirty- 
nine to the minute, and neither form nor time was perfect. Mr. 
Goldie now called upon his crew, and the Clasper boat showed 
great qualities ; it shot away visibly, like a horse suddenly 
spurred ; this spurt proved that Cambridge had great reserves of 
force, and Oxford had very little. Houblon and his gallant men 
struggled nobly and unflinchingly on ; but, between Barnes 
Bridge and Mortlake, Goldie put the steam on again, and in- 
creased the lead to about a length and a half clear water. The 
gun was fired, and Cambridge won the race of 1872. 

In this race Oxford, contrary to her best traditions, pulled a 
faster stroke than Cambridge; the Oxford coxswain's experience 
compensated for his greater weight. The lighter coxswain 
steered his boat in and out a bit, and will run some risk of be- 
ing severely criticised by all our great contemporaries — except 
Zig-Zag. As for me, my fifty summers or fifty winters — there 
is no great difi'erence in this island of the blessed, they are 
neither of them so horrible as the spring — have disinclined me 
to thunder on the young. A veteran journalist perched on the 
poop of a steam vessel has many advantages. He has a bird's- 
eye view of the Thames, and can steer Clasper's boat with his 
mind far more easily than can a younster squatted four inches 
above the water, with eight giants intercepting liis view of a 
strange river, and a mob shouting in his ears like all the wild 
beasts of a thousand forests. 



50 EEADIANA. 

Mr. Goldiahas done all his work well fol* months. He chose 
his men impartially, practiced them in time, and finally rowed 
the race with perfect judgment. He took an experimental time, 
and finding he could hold it. made no premature call upon his 
crew. He held the race in hand, and won it from a plucky op- 
ponent without distressing his men needlessh^ No man is a 
friend of Oxford, who tells her to overrate accidents, and under- 
rate what may be done by a wise President before ever the boats 
r.-ach Putney. This London race was virtually won at Cam- 
bridge. Next year let Oxford choose her men from no favorite 
schools or colleges, lay aside her prejudice against Clasper, and 
give him a trial; at all events, return to her svvinging-stroke, 
and practice tilt not only all the eight bodies go like one, but all 
eight rowlocks ring like one; and the spirit and bottom that 
enabled her to hang so long on the quarter of a first-rate crew in 
a first-rate boat will be apt to land her a winner in the next and 
many a hard-fought race. 

CHARLES READE. 



BUILDEES' BLUNDERS. 

To THE Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette." 

FIRST LETTER. 

T<rB, — Amidst the din of arms abroad and petty politics at 
rome, have tou a corner for a subject less exciting, but very 
important to Englishmen V Then let me expose that great blot 
Upon the English intellect, the thing we call a HOUSE, especially 
as it is built in our streets, rows, and squares. 

To hegin at the bottom— the drains are inside and hidden; no- 
body linovvs their course. A foul s-mell arises: it has to be groped 
for, and half the kitchen and scullery floors taken up — blunder 
1. Drains ought to be outside; and, if not, their course be 
marked, with the graving tool on the stones, and a map of the 
drains deposited Avith.a parish officer; overlaying boards and 
stones ought to be hinged, to facilitate examination. Things 
capable of derangement should never be inaccessible. This is 
com.mon sense; yet, from their drains to their chimnevpots, the 
builders defy this maxim. 

The kitchen windows are sashes, and all sash-windows are a 
mistake. They are small; they ought to be as large as possible. 
The want of light in kitchens is one of the causes why female 
servants — though their lot is a singularly happy one — are sin- 
gularly irritable. But, not to dwell on small errors, the next 
great blunder in the kitchen is the plaster ceiling. 

The plaster ceiling may pass, with London builders, for a 
venerable antiquity that nothing can disturb, but to scholars it is 
an unhappy novelty, and, in its jiresent form , inexcusable. It was 
invented in a tawdry age as a Aehicle of tloiid ornamontation; 
but what excuse can tliere be for a jdiiiu jjlaster ceiling? Count 
the objections to it in a kitchen. 1. A kitchen is a low room, 
and the ceiling makes it nine inches lower. 3. "White is a glar- 



READIANA. 51 

ing color, and a white ceiling makes a low room look lower. 3. 
This kitchen ceiling is dirty in a month's wear, and filthy in three 
months, with the smoke of gas, and it is a thing the servants 
cannot clean. 4. You cannot hang things on it. 

Now cliange all this: lay out the prime cost of the ceiling, and 
a small part of its yearly cost, in finishing your joists and boards 
to receive varnish, and in varnishing them with three coats of 
good copal. Your low room is now nine inches higher, and looks 
three feet. You can put in hooks and staples galore, and make 
the roof of this business-room useful; it is, in color, a pale amber 
at starting, which is better for the human eye than white glare, 
and, instead of getting uglier every day, as the plaster ceiling 
does, it improves every month, every year, every decade, every 
century. Clean deal, under varnish, acquires in a few years a 
beauty oak can never attain to. So much for the kitchen. 

The kitchen stairs, whether of stone or wood, ought never to 
be laid down without a protecting nozzle. The brass nozzle costs 
some money, the lead nozzle hardly any; no nozzle can be dear; 
for it saves the steps, and they are dearer. See how the kitchen 
steps are cut to pieces for want of that little bit of forethought 
in the builder. 

We are now on the first floor. Over our heads is a blunder, 
the plaster ceiling, well begrimed with the smoke from the 
gaselier, and not cleanable by the servants: and we stand upon 
another blunder; here are a set of boards, not joined together. 
They are nailed down loose, and being of green wood they gape: 
now the blunder immediately below, the plaster ceiling of the 
kitchen, has provided a receptacle of dust several inches deep. 
This rises when you walk upon the floor, rises in clouds when 
your children run; and that dust marks your carpet in black 
lines, and destroys it before its time. These same boards are laid 
down without varnish; by this means they rot, and do not last 
one-half, nor, indeed, one-quarter, of their time. Moreover, the 
unvarnished boards get filthy at the sides before you furnish, and 
thus you lose the cleanest and most beautiful border possible to 
your carpet. So the householder is driven by the incapacity of 
the builder to pitiable substitutes — oil cloth, Indian matting, and 
stained wood, which last gets uglier every year, whereas deal 
boards varnished clean improve every year, every decade, every 
century. 



I am, sir, 



Yours very truly, 

CHARLES READE. 



SECOND LETTER. 

Sir, — When last seen I was standing on the first floor of the 
thing they call a house, with a bundle under my feet-— unvar- 
nished, unjoined boards; and a blunder over my head — the op- 
pressive, glaring, plaster ceiling, full of its inevitable cracks, and 



52 BEADIANA. 

foul with the smoke of only three months' gas. This room has 
square doors with lintels. Now all doors and doorways ought to be 
arched, for two reasons — first, the arch is incombustible, the 
lintel and breast- summer are combustible; secondly, the arch, 
and arched door, are b<3autiful; the square hole in the wall, and 
square door, are hideous. 

Sash Windows. 

This room i» lighted by what may be defined "the unscien- 
tific window." Here in this single structure you may see most 
of the intellectual vices that mark the unscientific mind. The 
pcientific way is always the simple way ; so 1 lere you have compli- 
cation on complication, one half the window is to go up, the other 
half is to come down. The maker of it goes out of his way to 
struggle with Nature's laws: he grapples insanely with gravita- 
tion, and therefore he must use cords, and weights, and pulleys, 
and build boxes to hide them in — he is a great Uider. His 
wooden frames move up and down wooden grooves open to at- 
mospheric influence. What is the consequence? The atmos- 
phere becomes humid; tlie wooden frame sticks in the wooden 
box, and the unscientific window is jammed. What ho! Send 
for the CURSE OF FAMILIES, the British workman! Or one of 
the cords breaks (they are always breaking) — send for the CURSE 
OP FAMILIES to patch the blunder of the unscientific builder. 

Now turn to the scientific window; it is simply a glass door 
with a wooden frame: is is not at the mercy of the atmosphere; 
it enters into no contest with gravitation; it is the one rational 
window upon earth. If a small window, it is a single glass 
door, if a large window, it is two glass doors, each calmly turn- 
ing on three hinges, and not fighting against God Almighty and 
his laws, when there is no need. 

The scientific window can be cleaned by the householder's serv- 
ants without difficulty or danger, not so the unscientific win- 
dow. 

How many a poor girl has owed broken bones to the sash-win- 
dow ! Nowadays human masters, afflicted with unscientific win- 
dows,send for the curse of families whenever their windows are 
dirty ; but this costs seven or eight pounds a year, and the 
householder is crushed under taxes enough without having to 
pay this odd seven pounds per annum for the nescience of tlie 
builder. 

We go up the stairs — between two blunders ; the balusters are 
painted, whereas they ought to be made and varnished in the 
carpenter's shop, and then put up ; varnished wood improves 
■with time, painted deteriorates. On the other side is the domes- 
tic calamity, foul wear, invariable, yet never provided for ; fur- 
niture mounting the narrow stairs dents the wall and scratches 
it ; sloppy housemaids paw it as they pass, and their dirty gowns, 
distended by crinoline, defile it. 

What is to be done then? must the whole staircase be repaint- 
ed every year, because five feet of it get dirty, or shall brains 
step in and protect the vulnerable part ? 

The cure to this curse is chunam ; or encaustic tiles, set five 



READIANA. 53 

feet high all up the stairs. That costs money ! Granted ; but 
the life of the house is not the life of a butterfly. Even the 
tiles are a cheap cure, for repeated paintings of the ivhole surface 
mighty soon balance the prime cost of the tiles set over a small 
part. 

The water-closet has no fire-place. That is a blunder. Every 
year we have a few days' hard frost, and tben, without a fire in 
the water-closet, the water in the pan freezes, the machinery is 
jammed, and the whole family endure a degree of discomfort, 
and even of degradation, because the builder builds in summer 
and forgets there is such a thing as winter. 

The drawing-room presents no new featiu-e; but the plaster 
ceiling is particularly objectionable in this room, because it is 
under the bedrooms, where water is used freely. Now if a man 
spills but a pint of water in washing or bathing, it runs through 
directly and defiles the drawing-room ceiliug:. Perhaps this 
blunder ought to be equally divided between the ceiling and the 
floor above, for whenever bedroom floors shall be properly con- 
structed they will admit of buckets of water being sluiced all 
over them; and, indeed, will be so treated, and washed as 
courageously as are sculleries and kitchens only under the pres- 
ent benighted system. 

I pass over the third floor, and mount a wooden staircase, a 
terrible blunder in tliis part of the house, to the rooms under the 
roof. These rooms, if the roof was open-timbered, would give 
each inmate a great many cubic feet of air to breathe; so the 
perverse builder erects a plaster ceiling, and reduces him to a 
very few cubic feet of air. This, the maddest of all the ceilings, 
serves two characteristic purposes; it chokes and oppresses the 
poor devils that live under it, and it hides the roof; now the roof 
is the part that oftenest needs repairs, so it ought to be the most 
accessible part of the house, and the easiest to exantine from the 
outside and from the inside. For this very reason Perversity in 
person hides it; whenever your roof or a gutter leaks, it is all 
groping and speculation, because your builder has concealed the 
inside of the roof with that wretched ceiling, and lias made the 
outside accessible only to cats and sparrows, and the "curse of 
families." N.B. — Whenever that curse of families goes out on 
that roof to mend one hole, he makes two. Why not ? thanks 
to the perverse builder you can't watch him, and he has got a 
friend a plumberl 

We now rise from folly to lunacy; the roof is half perpendic- 
ular. This, in a modern house, is not merely silly, it is disgrace- 
ful to the human mind; it was all very well before gutters and 
Eipes were invented: it was well designed to shoot off the water 
y the overlapping eves: but now we run our water off by our 
gutters and pipes, and the roof merely feeds them; the steep 
roof feeds them too fast, and is a main cause of overflows. But 
there are many other objections to slanted roofs, especially in 
streets and rows: 

Ist. The pyramidal roof, by blocking up the air, necessitates 
high stacks of chimneys, which are expensive and dangerous. 

8d, The pyramidal roof presses laterally against the walls, 



54 READIANA. 

which these precious builders make thinner the higher they raise 
them, and subjects the whole structure to danger. 

3d. It robs the family of a whole floor, and gives it to cats 
and sparrows. I say that a five-story house with a pyramidal 
roof is a five-story house, and with a flat roof is a six- story 
house. 

4th. It robs the poor cockney of his country view. It is as- 
tonishing how much of the country can be seen from the roofs of 
most London streets. A poor fellow who works all day in a hole, 
might smoke his evening pipe, and see a wide tract of verdure — 
but the builders have denied him that; they build the roof for 
cats, and the " curse of families," they do not build it for th% 
man whose bread they eat. 

5th, It robs poor families of their drying-ground. 

6th. This idiotic blunder, slightly aided by a subsidiary blun- 
der or two, murders liouseholdei-s and their families wholesale, 
destroys them by the most terrible of all death — burning alive. 

And I seriously ask you, and any member of either House, 
who is not besotted with little noisy things, to consider how 
great a matter this is, though no political squabble can be raised 
about it. 

Mind you, the builders are not to blame that a small, high 
house, is, in its nature, a fire-trap. This is a misfortune insepa- 
rable from the shape of the structure and the nature of that teri- 
ble element. The crime of the builders lies in this, that they 
make no intelligent provision against a danger so evident, but 
side with the fire not the family. 

Prejudice and habitual idiocy apart, can anything be clearer 
than this, that, asfireviounts, and smoke stifles, all j^er sons who are 
above a fire ought to he enabled to leave the house by icay of the roof 
as easily and rapidly as those belotv the fire caii go out by the street 
doorf 

Now what do the builders do ? They side with fire; they ac- 
cumulate combustible materials on the upper floors, and they 
construct a steep roof most difiicult and dangerous to get about 
on, but to the aged and infirm impossible. Are then the aged 
and infirm incombustible? This horrible dangerous roof the 
merciless wretches make so hard of access that few are the 
cases, as well they know by the papers, in which a life is saved 
by their hard road. They open a little trap-door — horizontal, of 
course; always go against God Almiglity and his laws, when you 
can; that is the idiot's creed. This miserable aperture, scarcely 
big enough for a dog, is bolted or padlocked. It is seven feet 
from the ground. Yet the builder fixes no steps nor stairs to it; 
no, get at it how you can. What chance has a mixed family of 
escaping by this hole in case of fire? Nobody ever goes on that 
beastly pyramid except in case of fire: and so the bolt is almost 
sure to be rusty, or the key mislaid, or the steps not close; and, 
even if the poor wretches get the steps to the place, and heave 
open the trap, in spite of rust and gravitation, these delays are 
serious; then the whole family is to be dragged up through a 
dog-hole, and that is slow work, and fire is swift and smoke is 
stifling. 



READIANA. 55 

A thousand poor wretches have been clean murdered in my 
time by the builders with their trap-door and their pyramidal 
roof. Thousands more have ))een destroyed, as far as the build- 
ers weie concerned; the fire-men and fire-escape men saved 
them, in spite of the builders, by means which were a disgrace 
to the builders. 

But in my next, sir, I will show you that in a row of houses 
constructed by bi-ains not one of these tragedies could ever have 
taken place. I am, sir, 

Yours very truly. 

CHARLES READE. 



THIRD LETTER. 

Sir, — It is a sure sign a man is not an artist, if, instead of 
repairing his defects, he calls in an intellectual superior to 
counteract them. The fire-escape is creditable to its inventor, 
but difigraceful to the builders. I hey construct a fire-trap with- 
out an escape; and so their fellow-citizens are to cudgel their 
brains and supply the builders' want of intelligence and human- 
ity by an invention working /ro?u the street. The fire-escape can 
after all save but a few of the builders' victims. The only uni- 
versal fire-escape is — the bational roof. 

To be constructed thus: Light iron staircases from the third 
floor to top floor and rational roof. Flat roof, or roofs, metal 
covered, with scarcely perceptible fall from center. Open joists 
and iron girders, the latter sufficiently numerous to keep the 
roof from falling in, even though fire should gut the edifice. An 
iron-lined door, surmounted by a skylight; iron staircase up to 
this door, which opens rationally on to the rational roof. Large 
cistern or tank on roof with a force pump to irrigate the roof in 
fire or summer heats. Round the roof iron rails set firm in bal- 
cony, made too hard for bairns to climb, and surmounted by 
spikes. Between every two houses a pai*tition gate with two locks 
and keys complete. Bell under cover to call neighbor in fire or 
other emergency. 

Advantages offered by " tJie rational roof:" 

1. High chimney stacks not needed. 

3. Nine smoking chimneys cured out of ten. There are always 
people at hand to make the householder believe his chimney 
smokes by some fault of construction, and so they guU him into 
expenses, and his chimney smokes on — because it is not thor- 
oughly swept. Send a faithful servant on to the rational roof, 
let him see the chimney- sweep's brush at the top of every chimney 
before you pay a shilling, and good-by smoking chimneys. 
Sweeps are rogues, and the irrational roof is their shield and 
buckler. 

3. The rails painted chocolate and the spikes gilt would 
mightily improve om* gloomy streets. 

4. Stretch clothes-lines from spike to spike, and there is a 
drying-ground for the poor, or for such substantial people as are 
sick of the washerwomen and their villainy. These heartless 
knaves are now rotting fine cambric and lace with soda and 



56 READIANA. 

chloride of lime, though borax is nearly as detergent and injures 
nothing. 

5. A playground in a purer air for children that cannot get to 
the parks. There is no ceiling to crack below. 

6. In summer heats a blest retreat. Irrigate and cool from 
the cistern; then set four converging poles, stretch over these 
from spike to spike a few breadths of awning; and there is a 
delightful tent, and perhaps a country view. If the Star and 
Garter at Richmond had possessed such a roof, they would have 
made at least two thousand a year upon it, and perhaps have 
saved their manager fiom a terrible death. 

7. On each roof a little flagstaff and streamer to light the 
gloom with sparks of color, and tell the world is the master at 
home or not. This would be of little use now; but, when once 
the rational roof becomes common, many a friend could learn 
from his own roof whether a friend was at home, and so men's 
eyes might save their legs. 

8. In case of fii'e the young and old would walk out by a rational 
door, on to a rational roof , and ring at a ratioiial gate. Then their 
neighbor lets them on to his rational roof , and they are safe. Mean- 
time the adult males, if any, have time to throw vret blankets on 
the skylight and turn the water on to the roof. The rational 
roof, after saving the family which its predecessor would have 
destroyed, now proceeds to combat the fire. It operates as an 
obstinate cowl over the fire: and, if there are engines on the 
spot, the victory is certain. Compare this with the whole con- 
duct of the irrational roof. First, it murdered the inmates; 
then it fed the fire; then it collapsed and fell on the groimd- 
floor, destroying more property, and endangering the firemen. 

I am. 

Yours very truly, 

CHARLES READE. 



FOURTH LETTER. 

Sir, — The shoe pinches all men more or less; but, on a calm 
survey, I think it pinches the householder hardest. 

A house is as much a necessary of life as a loaf; yet this 
article of necessity has been lately raised to a fancy price by the 
trade conspiracies of the building operatives — not so much by 
their legitimate strikes for high wages as by their conspiring 
never to do for any amount of wages an honest day's work — and 
the fancy price thus created strikes the householder first in the 
form of rent. But this excessive rent, although it is an out- 
going, is taxed as income; its figure is made the basis of all the 
imperial and parochial exactions that crush the householder. 
One of these is singularly unfair; I mean " the inhabited house 
duty." What is this but the property tax rebaptized and levied 
over again, but from the wrong person ? The property tax is a 
percentage on the rent, levied in good faith, from the person 
whom the rent enables to pay that percentage; but the inhabited 
house duty is a similar percentage on the rent levied, under the 
disguise of another name, from him whom the rent disables. 



READIANA. 57 

In London the householder constantly builds and improves 
the freehold; instantly parochial spies raise his rates. He has 
employed labor, and so far counterbalanced pauperism; at the 
end of his lease the liouse will bear a heavier burden; but these 
heartless extortioners they bleed the poor wretch directly for 
improving parochial propeity at his own expense. At the end 
of his lease the rent is raised by the landlord on account of these 
taxed improvements, and the tenant turned out with a heavier 
grievance than the Irish farmer; yet he does not tumble his 
landlord, nor even a brace of vestrymen. The improving tenant, 
while awaiting tlie punishment of virtue, spends twenty times 
as much money in pipes as the water companies do, yet he has 
to pay them for water a price so enormous, that they ought to 
bring it into his cisterns, and indeed into his mouth, for the 
money. He pays through the nose for gas. 

He bleeds for the vices of the working classes; since in our 
wealthy cities nine-tenths of the pauperism is simply waste and 
inebriety. He often pays temporary relief to an improvident 
workman, whose annual income exceeds his own, but who will 
never put by a shilling for a slack time. 

In short, the respectable householder of moderate means is so 
ground down and oppressed that, to my knowledge, he is on 
the road to despondency and ripening for a revolution. 

Now, I can hold him out no hope of relief from existing taxa- 
tion; but his intolerable burden can be lightened by other 
means; the simplest is to keep down his bill for repairs and 
decorations, which at present is made monstrous by original 
m isconstruction . 

The irrational house is an animal with its mouth always 

OPEN. 

This need not be. It arises from causes most of which are 
removable: viz., 1st, from unscientific construction; 2d, plaster 
ceilings; 3d, the want of j)rovision for partial wear; 4th, the 
abuse of paint; 5th, hidden work. 

Under all these lieads I have already given examples. I wUl 
add another under head 3. The dado or skirting-board is to keep 
furnitm-e from marking the wall; but it is laid down only one 
inch thick, whereas the top of a modern chair overlaps the 
bottom an inch and a half. This the builders do not, or will 
not, observe, and so every year in London fifty thousand rooms 
are spoiled by the marks of chair-backs on the walls, and the 
owners driven to the expense of painting or papering sixty 
square yards, to clean a space tliat is less than a square foot, but 
fatal to the appearance of the room. 

Under head 4 let me observe that God's woods are all very 
beautiful; that only fools are wiser than God Almighty; that 
vEirnish shows up the beauty of those woods, and adds a gloss; 
and that house- paint hides their beauty. Paint holds dirt, and 
does not wash well; varnish does, Paint can only be mixed by 
a workman. Varnish is sold fit to put on. Paint soon requires 
revival, and the old paint must be rubbed off at a great expense, 
and two new coats put on. Varnish stands good for years, and, 
when it requires revival, little more is "necessary than simple 



58 READIANA. 

cleaning, and one fresh coat, which a servant or anybody can 
lay on. 5. Hidden work is sure to be bad work, and so needs 
repairs, especially in a roof, that sore tried part; and the rej^airs 
are the more exijeusive that the weak place has to be groped for. 

I have now, I trust, said enough to awaken a few household- 
ers from tlie lethargy of despair, and to set them thinking a little 
and organizing a defense against the extraordinary mixture of 
stupidity and low instinctive trade cunning of which they are 
the victims; for a gentleman's blunders hurt himself, but a 
tradesman's blunders always hurt his customers; and this is sing- 
ularly true of builders' blunders; they all tend one way — to 
compel the householder to be always sending for the builder, or 
that bungling rascal the plumber, to grope for his hidden work, 
or botch his bad work, or clean his unscientific windows, or 
whitewash his idiotic ceilings, or rub liis nasty unguents off 
God's beautiful wood, and then put some more nasty odoriferous 
unguents on, or put cowls on his ill-cleaned chimneys; or, in 
short, to repair his own countless blunders at the expense of his 
customer. 

Independently of the murderous and constant expense, the 
bare entrance into a modest household of that loose> lazy, 
drunken, dishonest drink-man and jack-man, who has the im- 
pudence to call himself the "British workman," though he 
never did half a day's real work at a stretch in all his life, is a 
serious calamity, to be averted by every lawful means. 
I am, sir, 

Yours faithfully, 

CHARLES READE. 



OUR DAEK PLACES. 
To THE Gentlemen of the Press. 

No. 1. 

Gentlemen, — On Friday last, a tale was brought to me that a 
sane prisoner had escaped from a private madhouse, had just 
baffled an attempt to recapture him by violent entry into a 
dwelling-house, and was now hiding in the suburbs. 

The case was gi-ave: the motives alleged for his incarceration 
were sinister; but the interpreters were women, and consequently 
partisans, and some, though not all, the parties concerned on 
the other side, bear a fair character. Humanity said: "Look 
into the case!" Prudence said: "Look at it on both sides." I 

insisted, therefore, on a personal interview with Mr. . This 

was conceded, and we spent two nours together: all which time 
1 was of course testing his mind to the best of my ability. 

I found him a young gentleman of a healthy complexion, 
manner vif, but not what one would call excited. I noticed, 
however, that he liked to fidget string and other trifies between 
his finger and thumb at times. He told me his history for some 
years past, specifying the dates of several events: he also let me 



READIANA. 59 

know he had been subject for two years to fits, which he de- 
scribed to me in full. 1 recognized the character of these fits. 
His conversation was sober and reasonable. But had I touched 
the exciting theme? We all know there is a class of madmen 
who are sober and sensible till the one false chord is struck. I 
came therefore to that delusion which was the original ground 

of 's incarceration; his notion that certain of his relations 

' are keeping money from him that is his due. 

This was the substance of his hallucination as he revealed it to 
me. His father was member of a firm with his uncle and others. 
Shortly before his death his father made a will leaving him 
certain personalities, the interest of £5,000, and. should he live 
to be twenty -four, the principal of ditto, and the reversion, after 
his mother's death, of another considerable sum. 

Early last year he began to inquire why the principal due to 
him was not paid. His uncle then told him there were no assets 
to his father's credit, and never had been. On this, he admits, 
he wrote '"abominably passionate" letters, and demanded to 
inspect the books. This was refused him, but a balance-sheet 
was sent him, which was no evidence to his mind, and did not 
bear the test of Addition, being £40,000 out on the evidence of 
its own figures. This was his tale, which might be all bosh for 
aught I could tell. 

Not being clever enough to distinguish truth from fancy by 
divination, I took cab, and off to Doctors' Commons, determined 
to bring some of the above to book. 

Well, gentlemen, I found the will, and I discovered that my 
maniac has imderstated the interest be takes under it. I also 
find, as he told me I should, his uncle's name down as one of 
the witnesses to the will. Item, I made a little private discov- 
ery of my own, viz., that is residuary legatee, subject to 

his mother's lif^ interest, and that all his interest under the will 
goes to five relations of the generation above him should he die 
intestate. 

I now came to this conclusion, which I think you will share 

with me, that 's delusion may or may not be an error, but 

cannot be a hallucination, since it is simply good logic founded 
on attested facts. For on which side lies the balance of credi- 
bility ? The father makes a solemn statement that he has thou- 
sands of pounds to bequeath. The uncle assents in writing while 
the father is alive, but gives the father and himself the lie when 
the father is no longer on earth to contradict him. They say in 
law '' Allegan s conti'ari a non est andiendus." 

Being now satisfied that the soi-disant delusion might be error 
but could not be aberration of judgment, I subjected him to a 
new class of proofs. I asked him if he would face medical men 
of real eminence, and not in league with madhouse doctors. 
" He would with pleasure. It was his desire." We went first 
to Dr. DicK'Son, who has great experience and has effected some 
remarkable cures of mania. Dr. Dickson, as may well be sup- 
posed, did not take as many seconds as I had taken hours. He 
laughed to scorn the very notion that the man was mad. "He 
is as sane as we are," said Dr. Dickson. From Boltou Street 



60 READIANA. 

we all three go to Dr. Ruttledge, Hanover Square, and, on 
the road, Dr. Dickson and I agree to apply a test to Dr, Rutt- 
ledge, which it would have been on many accounts unwise to 

apply to a man of ordinary skill. Dr. Dickson introduced 

and me thus, " One of these is insane, said to be. "Whicli is it?" 
Dr. Ruttledge took the problem mighty coolly, sat down by me 
fii-st, with an eye like a diamond : it went slap into my marrow- 
bone. Asked me catching questions, touched my wrist, saw my 
tongue, and said quietly, '' This one is sane." Then he went and 

tat down by and drove an eye into him, asked him catching 

questions, made him tell him in ordei' all he had done since seven 
o'clock, felt pulse, saw tongue: "This one is sane too." Dr. 

Dickson then left the room, after telling him what was 's 

supposed delusion, and begged him to examine him upon it. 

The examination lasted nearly half an hour, during which 

related the circumstances of his misunderstanding, his capture, 
and his escape, with some minuteness. The result of all this 
was a certificate of sanity; copy of which I subjoin. The origi- 
nal can be seen at my house by any lady or gentleman connected 
with literature or the Press. 

" We hereby certify that we have this day, both conjointly 

and separately, examined Mr. and we find him to be in 

every respect of sound mind, and laboring under no delusion 
whatever. Moreover we entertain a very strong opinion that 
the said Mr. has at no period of his life labored under in- 
sanity. 

" He has occasionally had epileptic fits. 

" (Signed) James Ruttledge, M.D, 

S. Dickson, M.D. 

" 19 Geokge Street, Hanover, Square, 
9th August, 1858." 

This man, whose word I have no reason to doubt, says the 
keeper of the madhouse told him he should never go out of it. 
This, if true, implies the absence of all intention to cure him. 
He was a customer, not a patient; he was not in a hospital, but 
in a jail, condemned to imprisonment for life, a sentence so 
awful that no English judge has ever yet had the heart to pro- 
nounce it upon a felon. is an orphan. 

The law is too silly, and one-sided, and sJou\ to protect him 
against the prompt and daring men who are even now hunting 
him. But while those friends the God of the fatherless has 
raised him concert his defense, you can aid justice greatly by 
letting daylight in. I wU) explain why this is in my next, 
I am, Gentlemen, 

Your obedient servant, 

CHARLES READE. 

Gabrick Club, 

10th August, 1858. 



READIANA. 61 



NO. II. 



Gentlemen— In England, "Justice" is the daughter of " Pub- 
licity." In this, as in every other nation, deeds of villainy are 
done every day in kid gloves, but they can only be done on the 
sly; here lies our true moral eminence as a nation. Our Judges 
are an honor to Europe, not because Nature has cut them out of 
a different stuff from Italian Judges; this is the dream of babies; 
it is because they sit in courts open lo the pubhc, and " sit next 
day in the neicspapers.'''* Legislators who have not the brains 
to appreciate the Public, and put its sense of justice to a states- 
manlike use, have yet an instinctive feeling that it is the great 
safeguard of the citizen. Bring your understandings to bear on 
the following sets of propositions in lunacy law:— First grand 
division— Maxims laid down by Shelford. 'a. The law re- 
quires satisfactory evidence of insanity. B. Insanity in the eye 
of the law is nothing less than the prolonged departure, tcithout 
a7i adequate external cause, from the state of feeling, and modes 
of thinking, usual to the individual when in health, c. The bur- 
den of proof of insanity lies on those asserting its existence. 
D. Control over persons represented as insane is not to be as- 
sumed without necessity. E. Of all evidence, that of medical 
men ought to be given with the greatest care, and received with 
the utmost caution. F. The medical man's evidence should not 
merely pronounce the party insane, but give sufficient reasons 
for thinking so. For this purpose it behooves him to have in- 
vestigated accurately tlie collateral ciacumstances. G. The im- 
putations of friends or relations, etc., ai-e not entitled to a??^ 
iceight or consideration in inquiries of this nature, but ought to 
be dismissed from the minds of the judge and jury, who are 
bovmd to form their conclusions from impartial evidence of 
facts, and not to be led astray by any such fertile sources of error 
and injustice.^' 

The second class of propositions is well known to your read- 
ers. A relative has only to buy two doctors, two surgeons, or 
even two of tljose " whose poverty, though not their will, con- 
sents." and he can clap in a madhouse any rich old fellow that is 
spending his money absurdly on himself, instead of keeping it, 
like a wise man, for his heirs ; or he can lock up any eccentric, 
bodily-afflicted, troublesome, account-sifting young fellow. 

In other words, the two classes of people, who figure as sus- 
p>ected ivitnesses in one set of clauses, are made judge, jury, and 
executioner, in another set of clauses, one of which, by a refine- 
ment of injustice, shifts the burden of proof from the accusers 
to the accused in all open proceedings subsequent to his wrong- 
ful imprisonment. — Shelford, 56. 

Now what is the clew to this apparent contradiction — to this 
change in the weathercock of legislatorial morality? It is 
mighty simple. The maxims, No. 1, are the practice and prin- 
ciple that govern what are called "Commissioners of Lunacy." 
At these the newspaper reporters are present. No. 2 are the 

* We are indebted to Lord Mansfield for this phrase. 



6a READIANA. 

practice and principle legalized, where no newspaper reporters 
are present. Light and darkness. 

Since, then, the Law de Lunatico has herself told us that she 
is an idiot and a rascal when shfe works in the dark, but that she 
is wise, cautious, humane and honest in the light, my orphan 
and myself should indeed be made to disregard her friendly hint 
as to her double charact(!r. This, gentlemen, is why we come 
to you first : you must give us publicity, or refuse us justice. 
We will go to the Commissioners in Lunacy, but not before their 
turn. We dare not abjure experience. We know the Commis- 
sioners : we know them intus et in cute : we know them better 
than they know themselves. They are of two kinds : one kind 
I shall dissect elsewhere ; the rest are small men afflicted with a 
common raaladv, a commonplace conscience. 

These soldiers of Xerxes won't do their duty if they can help 
it; if they can't, they will. With them justice depends on Pub- 
licity, and Publicity on you. Up with the lash! 1 

I am now instructed by him who has been called mad, but 
whose intelligence may prove a match for theirs, to propose to 
his enemies to join him in proving to the public that their con- 
victions are as sincere as his. The wording of the challenge 
being left to me, I invite them to an issue, thus: — " My lads, you 
were game to enter a dwelling-house kept by women, and pro- 
posed to break open a woman's chamber-door, till a woman 
standing on the other side vfitli a cudgel, threatened ' to split 
your skulls,' and that chilled your martial ardor. 

Vos etenim juvenes animum geritis muliebrem 
Ilia virago viri. 

'* And now you are wasting your money {and you will want it 
all), dressing up policemen, setting spies, and in short, doing the 
Venetian business in England; and all for what? You want our 
orphan's body. Well, it is to be had without all this dii-ty 
maneuvering, and silly small treachery. Go to Jonathan Wey- 
mouth, Esq., of Clifford's Inn. He is our orphan's solicitor, 
duly appointed and instructed; he will accept service of a writ 
de lunatico inquirendo, and on the writ being served, Mr. Wey- 
mouth will enter into an undertaking with you to produce the 
body of E. P. F. in coiu-t, to abide the issue of a daylight inves- 
tigation. If you prove him mad, you will take him away with 
you; if you fail to make him out mad before a disinterested 
judge, at all events you will prove yourselves to be honest, 
though somewhat hard-hearted, men and wovien." 

Should this proposal be accepted, t)ie proceedings of our op- 
ponents will then assume a respectability that is wanting at 
present, and in that case these letters will cease. Sub judice lis 
grit. 

I am, Gentlemen, 

Your obedient servant, 

CHARLES READE. 



READIANA. 63 

NO. III. 

Garrick Club, October. 

Gentlemen, — My last letter concluded by inviting the person 
who had incarcerated my orpl)an on the plea, of insanity, to 
prove that, whether mistaken or not, he was sincere. No such 
evidence has been offered. He has therefore served a writ upon 
this person and will proceed to trial with all possible expedition, 
subject of course to the chances of demurrer, or nonsuit.* 

It would not be proper to say more, pendente lite. But, some 
shallow comments having been printed elsewhere, it seems fair 
that those Editors who had the humanity, the courtesy, and let 
me add, the intelligence, to print my letters, should possess this 
proof that their columns have not been trifled with by 
Their obliged 

And obedient servant, 

CHARLES READE. 



NO. IV. 

*' Cunctando restituit rem." 

Gentlemen,— When, four months ago, I placed my orphan un- 
der the wing of the law, I hoped I had secured him that which 
is every Englishman's riglit, a trial by judge and jury; and need 
draw no further upon your justice and your pity. I have clung 
to this last hope in spite of much sickness of heart, month after 
month; but at last both hope and faith are crushed in me, and I 
am forced to fee, that without a fresh infusion of publicity, my 
orphan has no reasonable hope of getting a public trial, till he 
shall stand with his opponents before the God of the fatherless. 
I do not say this merely because his trial has been postponed, and 
postponed, but because it has been thrice postponed on grounds 
that can be reproduced three hundred times just as easily as 
fhrice, unless the light of pubUcity is let in. 

Lei me premise that the matters I have to relate are public 
acts, and as proper for publication and criticism as any other 
judicial proceedings, and that they will make the tour of 
Europe and the United States in due course. When the day of 
trial drew near in November last, defendant's attorney applied 
to have trial postponed for a month or two, for the following 
sole reason: — He swore, first, that a Mr. 3 Stars, dwelling at 
Bordeaux, was & witness without whom defendant could not 
safely proceed to trial; and he swore, second, that said 3 Stars had 
written to him on the 18th November, that, owing to an acci- 
dent on the .railway, he was then confined to his room, and had 
little hope of being able to leave Bordeaux for a month. No. 1, 
you will observe, is legal evidence: but No. 2 is no approach to- 
ward legal evidence. Nothing is here sworn to but the fact that 

* Individually I entertain no apprehension on this score. The constitu- 
tiooal rights of Englishmen are safe in the hands of the present judges; 
aud trial by jury, in a case of this character is one of those rights — pro- 
vided, of course, the proper defendant has been sued. 



64 READIANA. 

there exists an unsworn statement by a Mr. 3 Stai*s. On this 
demi-serai-affidavit, unsupported by a particle of legal evidence, 
a well-meaning judge, in spite of a stiff remonstrance, postponed 
the trial, nominally for one month, really for two months. I 
fear my soul is not so candid as the worthy judge's, for on the 
face of this document, where he saw veracity, I saw disingen- 
uousness stand out in alto relievo. So I set the French police 
upon Mr. 3 Stars, and received from the Prefect of La Gironde 
an official document, a copy of which is inclosed herewith. By 
it we learn, first, that the accident or incident was not what 
plain men understand by an accident on a railway. The man 
luu"t a leg getting down from a railway carriage, just as 
he might from his own gig. Second, that it was not quite 
so recent as his suppression of date might lead a plain 
man to presume, but was three weeks old when he wrote 
above; third, that he must have been well long before the 9th of 
December, for, writing on that day, the Prefect describes him as 
having made frequent excursions into Medoc since his incident. 
Unfair inaccuracy once proved in so important a statement, all 
belief is shaken. In all human probability, Mr. 3 Stars was 
convalescent on the 18th November, viz., three weeks after his 
railway incident. But it is certain he was irell on or about the 
1st December, and that, consequently, he could with ease have 
attended that trial, which his statement that he could not move 
till about the 18th December caused to be put off for two months. 
What man who knows the world can help suspecting tliat the 
arbitrary period of a month was arranged between him and the 
attorney, not so much with reference to the truth, as to the sit- 
tings of the Court at Westmiister upon special jury cases ? 

So much for abjuring the experience of centuries, and post- 
poning an alleged lunatic's trial for two months, upon indirect 
testimony that would be kicked out of a county court in a suit 
for ajWheelbarrow;5hearsay stuccoed, nursery evidence, not legal 
evidence. 

Well, gentlemen, the weary months crawled on, and the lame, 
old, broken-winded, loitering beldame, British justice, hob- 
bled up to the scratch again at last. Mr. 3 Stars was now in 
England. That sounded well. But he soon showed us that — 

" Coelum non animum mutant qui trans currunt." 

His health still fluctuated to order. Pretty well as to the wine 
trade; very sick as to the Court of Queen's Bench. He comes 
from Bordeaux to London (and that is a good step), burning, we 
are told, to attend the trial at Westminster. The trial draws 
near: he whips off — to Hampstead ? No; — to Wales. Arrived 
there, he writes, in due course, to his late colleague in affidavit, 
that he can't travel. This time the gentleman that does the in- 
terlocutory swearing for the defendant (let us call him Fabius), 
doubting whether the 3 Stars malady would do again by itself, 
associated with his "malade affidavitaire" two ladies, whom, 
until they compel me to write a fifth letter, I will call Mrs. 
Plausible and Mrs. Brand. Non-legal evidence as before. Fabius 
swears, not that 3 Stars is ill; that might have been dangerous; 



READIANA. 65 

but that 3 Stars says he is ill: which is true. Item that Mrs. 
Brand cannot cross the ditch that parts France from England, 
because she has had an operation performed. It turns out to 
have been twelve months ago. Item, Fabius .sura is that Mrs. 
Plausible say.s, the little Plausibles have all got scarlatina; and, 
therefore, Fabius sirear.s that Mrs. Plausible thinks the constitu- 
tional rights of the English people ought to remain in doubt and 
suspense, in the person <.)f our orphan, till such time as the said 
scarlatina has left her nursery (and the measels not arrived ?), 
" A tout bam bin tout honneur." 

All -which conjectural oaths, and svrom conjectures, and nurs- 
ery dialectics, thy took to Mr. Justice Erie, of all gentlemen in 
the world ; and moved to postpone the trial indefinitely. Early 
in the argument their counsel having, I think, gone through the 
schools at Oxford, took a distaste to the Irish syllogism that 
gleamed on Ms brief; videlicit, no witness who has scarlatina can 
come to Westminster and stand cross-examination by Q.C. 
Little b,c, and d are not witnesses, but have got scarlatina. 

El-go, capital A can't come to Westminster and stand cross-ex- 
amination by Q.C. 

Counsel threw over Mrs. Plausible and Hibernian logic gener- 
ally, and stood on the 3 Stars malady, second edition, and the 
surgical operation that was only twelve months old. But Mr. 
Justice Erie declined to postpone human justice till sickness 
and shamming should be no more. He refused to ignore the 
plaintiff, held the balance, and gave them a just and reasonable 
delay, to enable them to examine their " malades affidavitaires " 
upon commission. He was about to fix Saturday, Jan. 5, for the 
trial. They then pleaded hard for Monday. This was referred 
to plaintiff's attorney, who conceded that point. Having ac- 
cepted this favor, which was clearly a conditional one, and cnly 
part of the whole arrangement, they were, I think, bound by 
professional good faitli not to disturb the compact. They held 
otherwise ; they instantly se i to work to evade Mr. Justice Erie's or- 
der, by tinkering the Irish syllogism. In just the timeXhat it would 
take to send Mrs. Plausible a letter, and say it is' no use the Mttle 
Plausibles having scarlatina; you must have it yourself, madam, 
you had better have it by telegraph — Mrs. Plausible announces 
the desired malady, but not upon oath. " Scarlatina is easily 
said." II va sans dire que they don't venture before Mr. Justice 
Erie again with their tinkered affidavit. They sUp down to 
Westminster, and surprise a fresh judge, who has had no oppor- 
tunity of watching the rise and progress of disease. Their coun- 
sel reads the soldered affidavit. Plaintiff's counter affidavits are 
then intrusted to him to read. What does he do ? He reads the 
preamble, but burks the affidavits. The effect was inevitable. 
Even bastard affidavits cannot be met by rhetoric. They can 
only be encountered by affidavits. Judges decide, not on 
phrases, but on the facts before them. Plaintiff's facts being 
silenced, and defendant's stated, the judge naturally went with 
defendant, and postponed the trial. (No. 3.) 

Now, gentlemen, I am the last man in the world to cry over 
spilled milk? I don't come to you to tinker the untinkerabie 



66 READIANA. 

past; but, for the future, to ask a limit to injustice in its worst 
form, trial refused. 

Without your help, this alleged lunatic is no nearer the term 
of his sufferings; no nearer the possibility /)f removing that 
frightful stigma, which is not stigma only, but starvation; no 
nearer to trial of his sanity by judge and jury,^han he was four 
months ago. True, there are now three judges who will not 
easily be induced to impede the -course of justice iu this case; 
but there are other uninformed judges who may be surprised 
into doing it in general. Fabius can at any day of any month 
swear that some male or female witness says she wants to come 
into the witness-box, and can't. And so long as "Jack sweai-s 
that Jill says " is confounded with legal evidence, on interlocu- 
tory motions, justice can be defeated to the end of time, 
under color of postponement. Gentlemen, it is a known fact 
among lawyers that, in nine cases out of ten, postponement of 
trial has no other real object but evasion of trial by tii-iog out 
the plaintiff or breaking his heart, or ruining him in expenses. 

I see little reason whatever to doubt that this is a principal 
object here. Defendants have a long purse. Plaintiff is almost 
a pauper in fact, whatever he may be in law. Mr. 3 Stars, 
sworn to as an essential witness, has not seen the boy for years. 
How can he, therefore, be a very essential witness to his insan- 
ity at or about the period of his capture? Dr. Pillbox or Mr. 
Sawbones must be better cards so far: in a suit at law the evi- 
dence of insanity, like that of sanity, cannot be spread out thin 
over disjointed years, like the little bit of butter on a schoolboy's 
bread. ]\Ir. 3 Stars may be an evidence as to figures: but then 
the books are to be in court subpoena; and nobody listens much 
to any of us swearing arithmetic, wlien a ledger is speaking. 
The lady I have called Mrs. Plausible, would not, in my humble 
opinion, go into a witness-box if she were paid a hundred pounds 
a minute. I mean this anything but discourteously. 

I implore all just and honest men, especially those who are in 
the service of the State, to try and realize the frightful situation 
in which postponement of trial keeps an alleged lunatic. The 
bloodhounds are hunting him all this time. Tliere were several 
men looking after him the very last day he lost his hopes of im- 
mediate trial. Suppose that, on substantial grounds and illegal 
evidence, time should be afforded to find him out and settle the 
questions of fact and law by brute force, what complexion would 
these thoughtless delays of justice assume then in the eye of the 
nation? ay, and, to do them justice, in the consciences of those 
whose credulity would have made the blood-hounds of a lunatic 
asylum masters of an argument that has been now for many 
months referred to the Lord Chief Justice of England and a 
special jury ? Mind, the constitution has been tampered with; 
"habeas corpus" has been suspended by the boobies that framed 
tlie Lunacy Acts. The judges have power to impede justice, 
but not to impede injustice. In these peculiar cases, I am ad- 
vised, they can't order a sane man out of a lunatic asylum into 
the witness-box. Justice hobbles, but injustice flies to its mark. 
I declare to you that 1 live in mortal terror lest some evil should 



READIANA. 67 

befall this man under the very wing of the court — not of course 
from the defendant — but from some member or members of the 
gang of stupid ruffians I am assured are still hanging about the 
skirts of the defense; men, some of whom have both bloodshed 
and reasonshed on their hands already. My very housemaids 
have been tampered with to discover where "the pursuer," as 
the Scotch call him, is hiding and quaking. Is such an anomaly 
to be borne ? Is a man to be at the same time run from with 
affidavits and chased with human blood-hounds? Is this a 
state of things to be prolonged, without making our system the 
scorn and laughing-stock of all the citizens and lawyers of 
Europe ? 

Fletcher v. Fletcher only wants realizing. But some people 
are so stupid, they can realize nothing that they have not got in 
their hands, their mouths or their bellies. This is no common 
case, no common situation. This particular Englishman sues 
not merely for damages, but to recover lost rights dearer far 
than money, of wliich rights he says he is unjustly robbed; his 
right to walk in daylight on the soil of his native land, without 
being seized and chained up for life like a nigger or a dog; his 
footing in society, his means of earning bread, and his place 
among mankind. For a lunatic is a beast in the law's eye, and 
society's; and an alleged lunatic is a lunatic until a jury pro- 
nounces him sane. 

I appeal to you, gentlemen, is not such a suitor sacred in all 
good men's minds? Is he not defendant as well as plaintiff? 
Wby, his stake is enormous compared with the nominal defend- 
ant's; and, if I know right from wrong, to postpone his trial a 
fourth time, without a severe necessity, would be to insult Di- 
vine justice, and trifle with human misery, and shock the com- 
mon sense of nations. I am, your obedient servant. 

CHARLES READE. 

With this a copy is inclosed of the French Prefect's letter, and 
other credentials. These documents are abandoned to your dis- 
cretion. 

Nothing in the above letter is to be construed as assimiing that 
the defendant has a bad case. He may have a much better one 
than the plaintiff. I am not asking for the latter a verdict to 
which he may have no right; but a trial, to which he has every 
right. 

BoBDEAUX, le 9 Decembrey^ 1858. 

MONSIEUE,— En reponse a la lettre que vous m'avez adressee, a 
la date du 26 Novembre dernier, j'ai I'honneur de vous trans- 
mettre les renseignements qui m'ont ete fournis sur leSieurCun- 
liffe, sujet anglais. 

Le Sieur Cunliffe demeure a Bordeaux, rue Corie, 43. II est 
negociant en vins et parait jouir de I'estime deS personnes qui le 
connaissent. 

II est vrai qu'un accident lui est arrive, il y a un mois et demi, 
sur le chemin de fer; il est tombe en descendant et s'est blesse a 
une jambe; par suite il a garde la. chambre pendant quelque 



68 READIANA. 

temps, mais aujourd'hui il parait etre retabli; vaque a ses occu- 
pations ordinaires et fait souvent des excursions dans le Medoc, 
a quelques lieues de Bordeaux. 
Recevez, Monsieur, I'assurance de ma parfaite consideration, 
Le Prefet de la Gironde, 
(Signed) 

A Monsieur CHARLES READE, 

6, Bolton Row, Mayfair, Londres, 

In spite of lett^" four, the trial was postponed twice more. 

At last it came and is reported in The Times of July 8, 1859. 
The court was filled with low, repulsive faces of madhouse 
attendants and keepers, all ready to swear that the man was 
insane. He was put into the witness-box, examined and cross- 
examined eight hours, and the defendant succumbed without a 
struggle. The coming damages were compounded for an an- 
nuity of £100 a year, £50 cash, and the costs. 

As bearing upon this subject, my letter to the Pall Mall Ga- 
zette of Jan. 17, 1870, eulitled, " How Lunatics' Ribs get Broken," 
should be read. This letter is now reprinted at the beginning 
of Hard Cash. 



LETTER TO MR. J. R. LOWELL, 

(UNITED STATES MINISTER), 

ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

19, Albert Gate, Knightsbridge. 

September 2, 1880. 

Dear Mr. Lowell, — You are good enough to desire my opin- 
ion upon a proposed Copyright Treaty between the United States 
and Great Britain, " the principal feature of which is the grant- 
ing of Copyright, provided the book be manufactured in the 
country so granting it by a subject or citizen thereof within 
three months of its publication by the author." 

To reply to this outline I must ask to dissect it; for here in one 
sentence ai'e two proposals that I consider heterogeneous, and 
even discordant. 

Permit me then to put the matter thus:. 

1. — The book to be manufactured in the country granting Copy- 
right, by a subject or citizen. 

2. — This to be done (and I conclude the book published) within 
three months, &c. 

No. 1. — Let us examine precisely the grievance this treaty pro- 
poses to alleviate. 

An author's work which, wlien worth pirating, is the fruit of 
great labor, consists of an essential substance and a vehicle. 

The substance is the composition; the vehicle is generally paper 
and words written with ink. 

That the composition is the substance — though puny lawyers 



READIANA. 69 

and petty statesmen cannot see it, is shown by this — it can be 
sold viva voce apart from paper and written or printed words; 
dramatic compositions are so sold, and the first Epic poem was so 
delivered to the public for centuries, and the Chronicles of Frois- 
sart were eold viva voce by the author, and to his great profit, 
and no copies made till he died; and the public used to pay 
Dickens a much higher price for his spoken compositions, than 
for the same compositions papered, printed, and bound. 

A printed book, or play, is only the manuscript multiplied; 
the composition remains the substance; the paper, print, and 
binding, are still a mere vehicle, and not the only one; the 
Theater sells the same composition with quite a different vehicle. 

Now the grievance of authors against nations cultivating 
piracy is this — they rob the foreign workman, who produces the 
substance, of a book or play, yet remunerate all the workmen, 
whether native or foreign, who produce the mere vehicle. The 
injury is leveled at the foreign author qua author, and not a qua 
foreigner. 

Let a foreign author cross the water with a play and a book. 
Let him go into a theater and a printing-house; let him play one 
of those many characters he has created in his drama, and print 
fifty pages of his own composition, he can extort remuneration 
—although he is a foreigner — for both vehicles; but he can en- 
force none for the far more valuable substance he has created 
with infinitely greater, higher, and longer labor. Here, then, is 
an exceptional fraud leveled at exceptional merit, and one pro- 
ducing laborer picked out of a dozen for pillage, though what 
he produces contributes more to the aggregate value than the 
labor of all the other workmen concerned. 

This iniquity may pay a handful of booksellers, or theatrical 
managers, in a nation cultivating Piracy, but it massacres the 
authors of that nation by the competition of stolen compositions, 
and it robs the nation of the habit of literary and dramatic in- 
vention, wliich is a greater national treasure than any amount 
of stolen compositions, since the nation, which harbors pirates, 
has to pay the full price for the vehicles, and does not get the 
substance or composition for nothing, any the more because its 
booksellers and theatrical managers do. Indeed, as to the lat- 
ter, the prices are never lowered to the native public one cent, 
in those cases where the manager steals the drama from a for- 
eign author. 

Now proposition 1, taken singly, certainly cures the above 
grievance, so far as printed books are concerned. 

Authors have a moral right to be paid for their compositionb 
in every nation where the vehicle is paid for and the combina- 
tion sold, not given away; but they have no moral claim, that I 
am aware of, to create and sell the vehicle in a distant land, and 
if they have no such right, still less can their native publishers 
— mere occasional assignees of copyright— pretend to acquire a 
right from authors, which authors themselves do not claim. 

The United States are a protectionist nation, and it would be 
egotistical and childish of English authors to expect that nation 
to depart from its universal policy, and to make an exception in 



70 READIANA. 

favor of authors, and their mere occasional assignees; our cry 1" 
"no partiality 1" To ask you to deviate from your universal 
policy would be to ask for " some partiality." 

Proposition 2. — This rests on no basis of universal equity or of 
uniform national policy. It does not come from the mind of 
any American lawyer or statesman. It is one of those subtle 
suggestions of Puacy, with which all copyright acts are marred. 
Copyrights are neither meal nor meat, and therefore, like other 
products of high civiUzation, they caimot obtain their just value 
on a forced sale. But three months to transact the sale of the 
composition and also create the vehicle is a very forced sale. 

Habits are strong, and this proviso would encourage the bad 
habit the treaty professes to cure, instead of stimulating a good 
one. It would turn all the publishers, on both sides of the water, 
into Lot's wives, hankering after dear old Piracy, and longing to 
put the clock on three months. By hanging back during that 
short period they might drive even popular authors into a 
corner. But the proviso would do a much worse thing than 
that — the rising American author, who is Uterally withering 
under the present system, and who is the victim that needs loyal 
and earnest protection, far more than any British authoi does — 
would be juggled, under this proviso. For some years he must 
necessarily come into our market at a certain disadvantage in- 
dependent of law. British publishers would either offer him 
one-tenth of his value, or demand time to see how his book sold 
in the United States: and then, having gained time, would use 
this proviso, steal his composition if it proved a success, or chuck 
him a bone instead of his just slice. 

But these comments, you will understand, are leveled at the 
nude proviso as you have presented it to me. 

If your government has foreseen that it is certain to be abused, 
and to render the whole treaty more or less illusory, and there- 
fore intends to control it by some other clause, that is another 
matter. 

If not, and the proviso has been incautiously inserted with 
the reasonable desire to protect the public against a foreign 
author's refusal to sell his copyright at all, or on reasonable 
terms, the whole case could be met by an additional clause giv- 
ing the foreign author or proprietor the right to apply to the 
Judges in Banco for an extension of the terms, on the ground 
that he had offered the copyright, or a share in it, or the use of 
it, but had been unable to obtain terms corresponding in any de- 
gree with his market value at home. The judges liave the right 
to receive written evidence, less strict than a jury would require, 
and to extend the term or authorize the foreign proprietors to 
publish through a native agent. Or afford some other relief, under 
the vital conditions of the treaty. 

Having gone deeper into the matter than I intended, I mav as 
well volunteer a remark or two outside your queries, which may 
be of service to the American legislator, if he will receive it 
from me! 

There are two great literary properties of nearly equal value and 
importance. 



READ/ANA. 71 

1. A man's exclvisive right to print and publish the composi- 
tion he has created, whether history, romance, treatise or 
drama, etc. 

2. His exclusive right to represent on a public stage the 
dramatic composition he has created. 

No. 1 is called Copyright, No. 2 is called Stage-right. But, un- 
fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon muddlehead has hitherto avoided 
the accurate term, stage-right, and applied, in the teeth of 
sense, grammar, and logic, the imbecile phrase, " dramatic copy- 
right," to No. 2. But the phrase, " dramatic copyright," means 
the sole right of printing and publishing a play -book, or it means 
nothing at all. It cannot mean, nor be made to mean the right 
of representing a play . Now men are slaves of words; and so 
our lawgivers and yours, having the word "copyright" dinned 
eternally into their ears, and never hearing the word " stage- 
right," are at this moment in a fool's paradise. They imagine 
copyright to be an all important right and stage-right an insig- 
nificant affair. 

Pure chimera! stage-right is at least as important as copy- 
right, and international morality and sound policy demand 
international stage-right as much as they do international copy- 
right. 

Our two nations invest their money on the following scale: 

1. A vast sum, daily, in newspapers, of which the title is 
copyright; but not the contents. These protect themselves from 
fatal piracy; they die a natural death every afternoon, and so 
escape assassination next morning. 

2. A large sum, daily, in books. 

3. A large sum., daily, in represented plays — one hundred 
thousand pounds sterling per day at the very least. 

As regards 2 and 'd, you will find the comparative scale indi- 
cated in the newspapers themselves; these, with unerring in- 
stinct, discover the habits of their nation. Take them through 
the breadth of the land, you will find they review a book now 
and then, but they are eternally puffing plays, and at great 
length. 

Now by piracy of stage-right from foreigners, a nation loses 
its chance of that great treasure, a national drama, and does 
not get one cent per annum in exchange for that sei-ious depri- 
vation. The piratical publisher pretends he sells a book cheaper 
for stealing the composition. It is not true; for, if he bought 
the composition under a copyright act, he would sell all the 
copies instead of sharing the sale with other pirates; and so 
could sell cheaper than in the way of Piracy: but, if not true, 
it is plausible, and has deceived shallow statesmen by the score. 

But the piratical manager of a theater does not even preiend 
to lower his prices to the public in those cases, w^hen he steals 
the composition. 

There are, besides all this, two special reasons why you should 
propose int'^niational stage-right to tlie British Government, 
along with international copyright, and not as an afterclap, 
which you will ha.ve to do if you will not listen to Cassandi-a, 
better kno\vn in Knightsbridge as Charles Eeade, One is, that 



72 READTANA. 

the people most likely to give you trouble in this coiuiory, over 
internatioual copyright, are the British publishers. Habitual 
creators of the vehicle and not of the composition and the copy- 
right, they will naturally think it very hard they are not to be 
allowed to create the vehicle in the United States, 

Their opposition might be serious; because, for some genera- 
tions they have been allowed to thrust themselves forward and 
put the authors unreasonably in the background. 

To discuss with our Government the two great properties 
authors create, viz., stage-right and copyright, would tend to 
open John Bull's eyes, and show him which is really the leading 
character in literary property, the authors, who create all the 
stage-rights and all the copyrights, or the publishers, who acquire 
by assignment about one- third of the copyrights only, and none 
of the stage-rights. 

The second reason is, that at present the American dramatic 
author suffers a special iniquity, by Act of Parliament, deteri- 
orating the common law of England. 

If a British author writes a drama, represents it on the stage 
in Great Britain, but does not publish it, and then exports it 
to the United States, he possesses the sole right of representation 
in the United States, or, at all events, in the principal States. 
This has been decided by your judges after full and repeated 
discussion. 

The American dramatist, until 1842, possessed the same right 
under the law of England; and accordingly Macklm v. Richard- 
son, which is the English case that protects all unpublished 
dramas under the common law, was lately cited with authority 
in the tribunals of the United States on the occasion I have 
referred to. 

• But our copyright act of 1842 poked its nose into stage- 
right, with which it had nothing on earth to do, and inserted 
an unjust, oppi-essive, and unreasonable clause, outlawing from 
stage-right all dramas not fii'st represented in Great Britain. 
The framers of this, and a similar clause in the body of the 
act, mistook the root of an author's title. The poor souls imag- 
ined it accrues by publication or representation under an Act 
of Parliament, whereas it accrues earlier in time, and by an 
older and much higher title, viz. : creation, and under the com- 
mon law. 

Test. — Let A. write a MS. and send ft to B. B. print and pub- 
lish it, and register it at Stationers' Hall, and hand the MS. back, 
uninjured, without a scratch on it, to A. A. would sue B. for 
breach of copyright, under the common law, and B.'s parliamen- 
tary title, by publication and registration, would prove not 
worth a rush against the precedent title by creation and common 
1 iw. 

The American dramatist, therefore, is by the above clause in 
an act that liad no need to run, like a frolicsome colt, out of 
copyright into stage- rigl it, and so extend the field of its blun- 
ders, subjected to a special iniquity. 

In copyright there is, at present, a sort of equity of fraud. 



RE AD TAN A. 73 

Rob my authors, and I will rob your authors. But in stago-right 
it is pure iniquity, and the American dramatist the victim. 

These are the principal reasons why I venture to advise you 
not to exclude international stage-right from your discussion of 
international copyright with the British Government. 

I must now apologize for my presumption — which, however, 
arises from good-will— and for the crude and hasty character of 
these comments. But I present them to one who is well able to 
sift the chaff from the grain, and so make the best of them. 
I am, 

My dear Mr. Lowell, 

Yours very sincerely, 

CHARLES READE. 



VIOARIA. 
To THE Editor of the "Daily Telegraph." 

Sir, — There is a little stroke of business going to be done next 
Friday in the little town of Uxbridge, against which I beg to 
record a little protest. It is a public auction of a very small 
personalty professedly for the benefit of the Crown; but I appre- 
hend the proceeds will go to another branch of the revenue. 
This sale and the threatened appropriation of certain money 
which was regarded by the deceased holder as trust-money, 
arose out of the following circumstances: The Rev. W, Orr, a 
Nonconformist minister, wrote, with his own hand, August 6, 
1881, a will, containing a just and proper disposition of his small 
property. He bequeathed £50 to New College, Hampstead; £50 
in three sums to three poor Christian women who had been his 
housekeepers at ditferent periods; a few of his choicest books to 
clerical friends; his gold watch and chain to a Miss Ellen Orr; 
and the balance, after payment of expenses, to a Mrs. W. Orr. 
But as to a sum of £300, he did not bequeath it, but directed it 
to be returned to Miss Sarah Peters; and he appointed a Mr. Har- 
ris his executor. Mr. Orr showed this will at various times to 
several persons who knew his handwriting; and its contents be- 
came pubHc. They even reached the three poor housekeepers; and 
that is a sad feature of the case at present. A few days before 
31r. Orr died, a dear friend of his learned that his will was not 
attested, and advised him to repair that omission. Mr. Orr as- 
sented, but death surprised him before he could execute his de- 
clared purpose. He died February 7, 1882, deeply mourned by 
his own flock and revered by all good Christains in the town of 
Uxbridge. 

lie had no relations in law. His will was attested, in fact, by 
half a dozen witnesses, but not, in law, " by two," and therefore 
his property lay at the jnercy of what cuckoos still call " the 
( 'rown," but accuracy — if such a bird of paradise existed in Eng- 
land — would call " the Revenue." 

However, high-minded men, acting in the name of the Crown, 



74 READIANA. 

have of late been very shy of confiscating even in cases of felony, 
and as Mr. Orr was not a felon, but only a saint and an Irish- 
man, and therefore could not, ex vi terminoruin, be a man of 
business, we hoped that the Lords of the Treasury would respect 
his solemn wishes, since they are as clear, and clearer, than if 
the will had been drawn by a lawyer's clerk and signed by two 
witnesses. 

Accordingly the matter went before the Lords of the Treasury 
in two forms. 

1, Sarah Peters petitioned for the return of her £300, as above. 

2. Mr. Harris, the executor, offered to act and discharge all the 
debts, expenses, and legacies, if the Lords of the Treasury would 
forego their claim. 

Miss Peters tells me she has received no reply. 

Mr. Harris had heard onlj^ from the Solicitor of the Treasury, 
ordering an immediate sale of the property — with one exception. 
His vicarious Majesty, the Solicitor for the Treasury, accords to 
the executor the right to withhold the choice books, but not the 
right to withhold the gold watch and chain, which were as 
solemnly bequeathed to a person specified as the books were. 
Now, I did not expect this Imperial edict and high-minded, 
though illogical, distinctioji to be signed by the chief of that 
bureau, for he has valued books far more than gold from his youth 
up until now. But, by what I can learn, the edict is not signed 
]>y any Lord of the Treasury whatever. It is clear on the face of 
things that neither the petiticm of Miss Peters nor the proposal 
of Mr. Harris has been laid before the Lords of the Treasury, nor 
considered by responsible men. Yet prompt action is taken at 
once by vicarious rapacity. There is no vice in any of the 
individuals concerned; it is merely a vicious system. The 
Solicitor of the Treasury would not pounce upon this property 
for his personal benefit; the Lords of the Treasury will bring 
their understandings and their consciences to bear on the mat- 
ter — after a few months or years; and will probably decide in 
favor, not of English law, but of Continental law and universal 
morality, both of which support this deceased clergyman's will 
written by his own hand and shown to Ijis friends. But, mean- 
time, this harsh auction, ordered with inconvenient and indec- 
orous haste, over a new-made grave — this present activity of 
vicarious greed and dead silence as to equity to come— have 
shocked and revolted a thousand mourners, and cruelly disap- 
pointed the humble legatees as well as excited some public 
o lium. I do not wish to inflame their feelings, but to suggest 
their removal. Therefore, as my views are always unintelligi- 
ble to the clerks and secretaries, the duffers, the buffers, and the 
agents, of a public office, and I can no more get a manuscript 
past that incarnate rampart of "vicaria" than Miss Peters or 
Mr. Harris can, will you kindly allow me to approach the mag- 
nates of tlie Treasury by the only direct road I know — viz., the 
columns of a great public journal? I think, my lords, it would 
be well to let the people know without delay that you intend pei- 
sonally to consider the question whether or not, under the pecul- 
iar circumstances, any portion of this deceased clergyman's 



MEADIANA. 76 

estate, except the amount of legacy duty, shall be finally appro- 
priated by the State; and as regards the gold watch and chain, 
it is not too late to withdraw them from the coming sale; and I 
hope you will concede this favor, because, if they are thrown 
into the melting-pot of the Treasury next Friday, for not being 
hexaglot bibles, it may be difficult, even should Dr. Stevenson 
vouchsafe his aid, to reintegrate and reconstruct the component 
parts so as to recover their value to the legatee. To her they are 
not so many ounces of jeweler's gold, but the souvenir of one 
wlio never wasted time, yet Uved for eternity. 

Yours faithfully, 

CHARLES READE. 



HANG IN HASTE, REPENT AT LEISURE. 

A SUPPRESSED INDICTMENT. 



FIRST LETTER. 
To THE Editor of the "Daily TELEiaRAPH." 

September 29//*, 1877. 
Sir, — I read with surprise and deep concern these lines in the 
Daily Telegraph, Sept. 27: — 

" The Jury asked the learned Judge if they could have a copy 
of the Indictment. 

" Mr. Justice Hawkins said, 'It would not help them in the 
least, written as it was in legal phraseology.' " 

Now if the judge had said, " Of course, gentlemen, you have 
as much right to examine the indictment as I have ; but I warn 
you it is written in a jargon you are not intended to understand, 
but only to pronounce on, and so hang your fellow-creatures," 
there would have been no harm done, and a wholesale repri- 
mand administered to the pedantic clique which words these 
pubUc and terrible accusations in jargon and equivoques. 

But I infer from your printed lines that the jury asked for a 
copy of the indictment to compare with the condensed evi- 
dence, and did not get one. 

If so, the thing is monstrous, antl vitiates the proceedings, 
creditable as they were in many respects. Consider, sir, the 
Crown is not above the law. The Crown, in a prosecution of 
this sort, comes before the jury, who are the country, in the 
general character of plaintiff and proceeds by indictment. That 
indictment is the grave and deliberate accusation which the 
Crown, to guard against the errors and defects of the tongue, 
submits in xcriting to the judge and the jury. It is a legal docu- 
ment which the judge is bound to -criticise severely, on grounds 
of law. It is an allegation of facts and motives the juiy is 
equally bound to dissect severely, and compare it in every par- 
ti,eular with the evidence. Then, if there is a legal defect m it 



% READIANA. 

no bigger than a pin's head, the judge can upset the case in spite 
of its merits ; and by the same rule — whatever the egotism of the 
legal clique may think — if it vaiy from the truth in its allegations 
of fact or of motives, which latter are the vital part of an indict- 
ment,it is the duty of the jury to throw it over,or in certain cases to 
reduce the verdict. And it does so happen that in cases of alleged 
homicide the indictment ought always to be dissected without 
mercy by the jury, for here, where the Crown ought to be most 
accurate, it is most apt to exaggerate. The truth is, that many 
years ago the legal advisers of the Crown thirsted for the blood 
of accused persons, and framed indictments accordingly; and 
such is the force of precedent that even now the Crown (or some 
attorney's clerk we are content to call by that name) is some- 
what given to equivocating, exaggerating, and alleging more 
than can be proved, especially in the way of motives, which are 
the true sting of an indictment. 

Whatever laad and unreasonable custom the legal clique, in 
dealing with the nation, may have introduced into our courts, 
it is clearly the duty of thfe Crown Solicitor to lay before the jury, 
who are the country, not the copy, but twelve copies, of the in- 
dictment, before the prosecuting counsel opens his lips. The 
judge has no better, no other title to the copy of the indictment 
than each several juryman has. As to the jargon of indictments, 
I have not found it so thick but that a plain man can pick out 
of the rigmarole the facts and motives whereof what we call 
" the Crown " accuses the prisoner. If it were, the matter 
should be looked into at once. All cliques, however respectable, 
are public enemies at odd times. Many years ago the country 
had to compel the clergy to read prayers " in a language under- 
standed of the people." Country v. Cliqu<!. Next we had to 
compel a clique to give us the laws of England in English. 
Country v. Cliqu6. By and by we had to force a clique to drop 
the grossest compost of bad Latin and bad French a nation ever 
groaned under, and to give us our law pleadings in English. 
Country v. Clique. And now, if it is seriously asserted that the 
Crown attacks the lives and liberties of Britons in a language not 
understanded of the country, though the country has to judge 
both Crown and prisoner, it is time we copied ancestral wisdom 
and put our foot on imbecility No. 4. Country v. Clique. 

These, however, are after-considerations; at present I stand 
upon clear constitutional rights. 

1 understand the country demanded in open court a copy of 
that indictment, and did not get one. 

I repeat that demand in your columns, in order that the 
country may see it, jargon, or no jargon, and compare it with 
the evidence in your columns. Of course I do not address my 
demand to any gentleman in particular. There are several 
copies in existence. No doubt some just man will awake from 
his slumbers and send you a copy. I earnestly hope to see it 
printed in extenso. Till then I forbear all comments on the case, 
because the issues are not before me, any more than they were 
before the country at the trial. 

Your faithful servant, CHARLES READE. 



READ! ANA. 77 

SECOND LETTER. 

(Mohr 2<!, 1877. 

Sir. — It is an old sayiug that one fool makes many. I have, 
however, discovered something: more — viz., that one muddlehead 
sometimes makes a million, if he can get a popular journal to 
print him. I must take the world as it is; and in so grave and 
terrible a case, I dare not let your correspondent "A. B." pass 
unanswered. 

He is a lawyer, and does not pretend to deny that the jury 
liave as good a right to a copy of the indictment as the judge 
has. But he says that in a large experience of criminal trials, he 
never knew a judge to hand a copy of the indictment to the jury. 
He adds, in the roundabout style of men who do not think 
clearly, what really comes to this, that as the judge talked a 
great deal and well, it did not matter to the jury what the 
Crown ivrote. 

Now, sir, this is no answer to me. I never said the judge was 
bound to volunteer a copy of the indictment to the jury; I never 
denied the malpractice of the courts, and that the Crown solicit- 
or does not hand twelve copies to the jury, though it is his duty. 
I have never denied that twelve unguarded jurymen, new to the 
courts, often let the legal clique trepan them into trying a case 
w ithout studying the written issues. But ignorant persons can 
only forego their own rights. Their ignorance does not forfeit 
the rights of the informed. What we have to do with is a jury 
which acted on their rights and their duty. They were just 
enough, wise enough, and wary enough to demand, at a critical 
period of the trial, a copy of the very words of the Crown upon 
which, and not upon the judge's words, they had to say "Guilty 
or not Guilty." The judge put off this their just and proper de- 
mand, and gave a reason which, weighed against the wise and 
proper reasons of the jury and against their constitutional right, 
sounds almost like mere levity. By so doing, he left them to 
give their verdict on his own spoken words alone, and not on 
the written words of his Sovereign and theirs. This is the case. 
I think it is without precedent and vitiates the proceedings. If 
there is a precedent, however, it will be found and quoted. But 
the country will expect it to be a precedent that fits the case, 
without shuffling or equivocation, and meantime I hope the ex- 
ecution will not be hurried, but time given for the country and 
the Home Secretary to consider this fatal blot on the proceed- 
ings. Indeed, the matter ought to be noticed in Parliament, es- 
pecially in the House of Commons. 

I am, sir, your faithful servant, CHARLES READE. 



THIRD LETTER. 

Odoher 3d, 1877. 
Sir, — Mr. Abbott says the author of "It is Never too Late to 
Mend" is soft-hearted. Not a bit of it. He is only harder- 
headed than certain Englishmen. He proved in the story cited 



75 READIANA. 

above tliat the lionest man who kills a thief in prison contrary to 
law is a greater criminal than the thief. That was logic; not 
compassion. Mr. Abbott now reminds us that pettifogging 
judges, looking too closely into indictments, have quashed 
them on trumpery grounds of law, in spite of evidence. 
This is notorious. But what is the inference? are the judges 
not to be allowed a copy of the indictment? He has 
proved that, or he has proved nothing; for no jwy ever defeated 
justice with a quibble on the indictment. Tn spite of these occa- 
sional abuses, constitutional rights must be tampered with. A 
judge is as much entitled to a copy of the indictment as even the 
jury are, who have to try the issues. "What we have to do with 
is a new thing — the separate indictments of four persons, sub- 
mitted to the judge, but not seen by the jury, though they asked 
for them, and the jury delivering a sort of lump verdict on un- 
seen indictments, in which, perhaps, the Crown did not lump 
four very different cases in one without any discriminating 
words whatever. Who knows ? The indictments are still sup- 
pressed. Another of your correspondents draws me out by ma- 
licious misinterpretation. He puts violent and cruel words into 
my mouth, and is reckless enough, with my sober lines befoi-e 
him, to pretend that I compare Mr. Justice Hawkins to Judge 
Jeffreys. Of course such unscrupulous people can compel a 
man to notice them. The learned judge has been my cotirusel, 
and I have profited by his abilities. T was never so unfortunate 
as to have him against me, in court. I hope I never shall. The 
jury asked by word of mouth for the indictment. He replied, 
without much reflecton, by word of mouth. His reply was un- 
fortunate, as many a hasty reply of my own has been, and, as its 
effect was to deprive the jury of their constitutional rights, I 
think it vitiates the proceedings. As to the merits of the case, 
is it fair of any man to tell the public what I think when I my- 
self have been so careful not to rush hastily into that question? 
As it happens, I approve some things in the learned judge's sum- 
ming-up in spite of the objection taken to those particulars by 
others. It is only in one part of the subject I do not at present 
agree with him. Even then, I desire to think well before I 
write, for no man feels more than I do the responsibility to God 
and man of every one who uses the vast power of a popular 
journal in a case of life and death. 

Yours faithfully, CHARLEB READE. 



FOURTH LETTER. 

October lOth, 1877. 

Sm, — ^When a woman of property is half -starved by people 
who are eating her bread, and her husband, with his paramour, 
lives but one mile distant, on the money of their injm-ed bene- 
factress, and the victim dies covered with vermin and weighing 
about five stone, the wildfire of indignation will, I hope, always 
run through every vein of the country, and the judges share the 



READIANA. 75) 

just wrath of the gentry and of the millions who work so hard 
to feed their own helpless charges. 

But great wrath, even when just, is still a fever of the mind, 
and cannot discriminate. Whilst the heart is still hot with that 
fire which has been so truly called " a passing frenzy " [ira hrevis 
furor), the culpable ones seem criminal, the criminal ones seem 
monsters, and " our great revenge has stomach for them all." 

1, who write these lines, am but a man recovering fast from a 
fever in a nation which is recovering slowly biit surely. I re- 
cover fast, because, from ray youth, I have been trained in a 
great school to reason closely and discriminate keenly, and 
armed with Oxford steel against the tricks and sophistries of 
rhetoric, against the derangement of dates (which single artiiice 
will turn true facts into lies), against those fatal traps, equi- 
voques in language, and against all gaps in evidence, however 
small they may appear to the unwary. I giieve to say that I 
receive shoals of insulting letters, telling me I am a Whallevite 
and a novehst, and so disqualified. This draws a few unwilling 
words from me to disarm prejudice. I declared against Orton 
in the Daily News befere ever the Crown tried him. I then laid 
down the scientific principle which governs his case, the doctrine 
of multiplied coincidences; and. though I write novels at one 
time, I can write logic at another, and when I write a novel I 
give the public my lowest gifts, but I give them my highest 
when I write in a great journal upon life and death and justice. 
But the best thing the public, and those who govern it, can do, 
will be to go by things, not names, to sift my ai'guments as 
closely as I shall analyze the evidence and the hasty inferences 
in the greatest judicial error of modern times. 

The verdict against the Stauntons and Ehodes is a hodge- 
podge, in which the legally criminal and the legally culpable are 
confounded, and both sets of legal culprits are confounded with 
the moral culprits, who are clear of the case by the law of Eng- 
land and the rules of evidence that bind the Central Criminal 
Court. 

Few observers of mankind will deny me this, which, indeed, 
reads like a truism: 

Where A, B, and C confound four things, and D, on the same 
evidence, distinguishes them, it is a thousand to one that D is 
right, and A, B, and C are wrong. 

The position becomes even stronger when we find that A, B, 
and C have been subject to several confusing influences. It may 
be worth while to point out the confusing processes that mud- 
dled the jury, of which processes some rise from the habitual 
malpractices of this particular court, and others from faults that 
have been imported into it for this single occasion. 

Processes of Confusion, 

1. The court, for its convenience, tried four dissimilar cases in 
the lump, and the four prisoners stood together at the bar. 

3. Being near and dear to each other, and involved in one dan- 
ger, they suffered and sympathized openly. 



BO READIA NA. 

3. Twelve unguarded men looked on and deluded by the 
senses, which are always stronger than the judgment in un- 
trained minds, said to themselves " they are all in one boat." So 
they were — in one family boat, not one legal boat. But the 
family boat being in a legal dock, these good souls took it for a 
legal boat directly. 

4. The four separate indictments, with their curious counts, 
would have tended to cure this. But here the malpractices of 
the court came in with another process of confusion. 

By the law of England the arraignment of a prisoner consists 
of three parts; («) He is called to the bar by his name; (6) the 
indictment is read to him, every syllable of it; (e) he is invited 
to plead to the indictment, and no other form of words, and he 
has a right to plead guilty to one count, and not guilty to anoth- 
er count; and, if he is legally culpable, but not criminal, it is the 
wisest thing he can do. 

This being done by the Clerk of Arraigns, the paper that Clerk 
has read from becomes, from the universal practice of all our 
courts, the property of the jury so long as that trial lasts. 

But the Clerk of Arraigns, by a modern malpractice, broke 
this just and necessary law, and the judge let him. So each 
prisoner was grossly robbed of his right to admit one count and 
deny another, and the jury was grossly robbed of a copy of the 
indictment, though the mere preliminary jury whose responsi- 
bility is so much less, had one to sludy and find a true Bill on; 
and though it is not merely the right but the duty of the jury, 
as laid down by Blackstone himself very clearly, to study the 
indictment very closely and to find "guilty" on one count and 
"not guilty" on another, and to carry discrimination even 
further, for they can find guilty on one half of a divisable coimt 
and acquit upon the other. 

5. Law, justice, and common sense having thus been defied by 
the Central Criminal Court, and the great written instrument of 
discrimination withhold from them contrary to law, they were 
manipulated and confused by a rhetorician on the Bench, who 
picked out the higliest count and ignored the others, and with 
gentle hand extinguished their one faint gleam of incipient dis- 
crimination, and left no doubt to the jury in a case crammed 
with doubts; which M^as unprecedented. 

The result corresponded with all these co-operating processes. 

The judge laid down the law that whoever has by law, or takes 
upon himself, the charge of a helpless person and does not give 
her enough to live upon, is guilty of mui'der by omission. He 
did not say whoever has one-fourth of the charge, for that is not 
the law. 

The Charge. 

Under this ruling, on which I have something to say hereafter, 
the jiuy on the evidence contrived to see four persons, all of 
whom had either by law or their own act " the charge" of Har- 
riet Staunton, and all saw her pine to death and let her pine to 
death. 

Now let all men, in whose minds the very landmarks of truth 



READIANA. 81 

are not obliterated, look on that picture cojijured up by a jury 
under several processes of confusion along with this picture 
which the evidence reveals to a discriminating eye. 

Patrick Staunton, a committer of a crime, responsible for Har- 
riet Staunton's life by a pecuniary contract with Louis. He 
docks her food, strikes her, terrifies and strikes his wife for in- 
terfering, etc. The evidence suggests that if the man had died 
in 1876, Harriet Staunton might be alive now. He comes under 
the judge's ruling. He had " the charge." This is the only com- 
mitter of them all. Yet the jury can see nothing exceptional in 
fiis position. "We now step down to a much lower grade of 
crime. 

The Mere Omitters. 

At the head is Mrs. Patrick Staunton, a grown-up woman, ex- 
perienced, and no fool. Her neglect of Harriet is prima facie 
barbarous; but it transpu-es that there was conjugal influence 
and coercion. The woman encountered blows in defense of the 
victim. The deterring effect of those blows, and her pregnancy, 
cannot be exactly estimated; nor is it necessary. The law, 
already disposed to assume conjugal influence, except in an 
indisputable case of murder, is amply satisfied ■w'ith the ad- 
missions made on this head, and she is not a criminal, but 
a culpable offender. Two years' imprisonment. The next 
emitter is Clara Brown. She slept in the same room with 
the victim; allowed the vermin to accumulate; saw her suf- 
ferings more than Mrs. P. Staunton: filled her own belly 
and let her perish; nor did she sliow any positive goodness of 
heart, as the elder woman did once or twice. I mean she 
never faced a blow nor got an angiy word, and she never 
told a soul till tiie Crown Solicitor inspired her with higher 
sentiments. On the other hand, she was young, inexperi- 
enced, and stupid; and, though she saw most of the victim, 
never anticipated her death, which blindness in her rouses a 
suspicion that the whole set were much greater fools and 
smaller villains than they look. We now take a step in law 
which is as wide as the step down from the one committer to 
the four omitters. We go out of the house. We don't even go 
next door, but to another house a mile distant, where two self- 
indulgent adulterers were hiding themselves from Harriet 
Staunton and absorbed in adultery, vshich was made smooth by 
Patrick's control of the in jiu'ed wife. I never knew how low 
the human understanding could sink tUl I saw a jury who could 
confound this situation with that of Mrs. Patrick Staunton and 
Clara Brown, two people living in the house where Harriet 
Staunton pined on the first floor. That first floor Louis Staunton 
and Alice RViodes avoided from self-indulgent motives, that are 
out of the case. Of these two persons, the law never had any 
hold on Rhodes, A mistress living in one house is not bound to 
provide food for a wife living in another. RhodeB is out of the 
case. Louis Staunton, until someday iu August, 1876, was deep 
in the case. But the judge, in order to make hostile comments 
on his niggardliness, let in as evidence that he made a contract 



<J3 READIANA. 

with Patrick Staunton of this kind — Patrick was to receive 
Harriet in his own house, and receive twenty shillings per week. 
Louis was a mean scoundrel to oflf«r so small a sum, but a rustic 
laborer and eight children live on less. It crushes th(i charge of 
murder as completely as twenty pounds a week would. It is a 
contract in which both contracting parties contemplated, not 
the death, but the indefinite Hfe of Harriet Staunton. Its very 
niggardliness proves that on behalf of Louis Staunton. A man 
can transfer his legal responsibility. It is done daily. The legal 
responsibility of Louis Staunton passed by that pecuniary con- 
tract to Patrick as much as did the responsibility of that mother, 
who handed her child for five shillings a week to a baby-farmer, 
which baby-farmer neglected the child till it died a bag of 
bones, and was tried by Sir James Hawkins two days after the 
StauntonSi (See The Daily Telegraph, Oct. 1.) The attempts 
made to drag Rhodes into the case at all, and to drag Louis 
back into it after the admission of that contract, are pure soph- 
istry and equivocation, as I shall show in the proper place. 
Meantime here is the true picture. 

1. Committer and criminal. 

S. Culpable omitters; one condemned to die, one walking 
about London. 

3. and 4. Tsvo vile moral emitters clear of the crime, but re- 
lieved by the lawyers of all their ill-gotten money, defended 
with admirable speeches, but worse defended on the evidence 
than they could have defended themselves, and condemned to 
die. 

The blunder has been brought about partly by the recent mal- 
practices, and the inherent defects, of the Central Criminal 
Court, whose system is so faulty that it never gets below the 
surface of a case, and is the worst instrument for the discovery 
of truth in Europe; and partly from special vices and errors, 
that found their way into the case, and surprise the whole legal 
profession, so opposed are they to precedent, and to the best tra- 
ditions, and most sober habits, of the court. These it will be my 
next duty to analyze closely, but I think I can hit upon a briefer 
method than I have been able to pursue in this letter. 

Yours faithfully, CHAELES READE. 



FIFTH LETTER. 

October 12th, 1877. 

Sir. — Were I, who denounce an indiscriaiinating verdict upon 
four immoral egotists, to indorse the indiscriminating censure 
leveled at the judge who tried the case, I should exceed the 
error I condemn, for I should be morally unjust to the good; he 
has only been legally unjust to a portion of the bad. 

I declare then, that he had no power to prevent one of the 
omitters from giving evidence against the others, whose mouths 
were closed bv an iniquity of the lav which is itself doomed 
to death; nor had he any right to disparage her whole evidence, 
bwt only to reject one part and sift the rest with keen suspicion; 



HEADIANA. 83 

and, when he directed the jury to pi'efer the opinion of Doctors 
who had seen the body, to that of Doctors who had not, anil 
bade the jury observe the ugly circumstance that Harman, the 
doctor who had watched tlie post-mortem examination on behalf 
of the defendants, was not called for the defense, he did his duty 
to the jury, guided by innumerable precedents, which not only 
justified, but bound him. He did not make the rules of evidence: 
he found the riiles of evidence, and very wise they are. In a 
word, I will not willfully object to anything but what defies prec- 
edent, and the habits of our other judg(;s, and every one of 
their predecessors, whose name their country honors. 

1. The judge laid down the law thus, as affecting the only 
count of a suppressed indictment which he permitted the jury 
to try; " every person who is under a legal duty, whether such 
duty be imposed by the law, or imposed by contract, or by the 
act of taking charge, wrongfully, or otherwise, of another per- 
son, to provide the necessaries of life, every such person is 
criminally responsible for the culpable neglect of that duty. 
And if the person so neglected, is, from age, insanity, health, or 
any other cause, unable to take care of himself, and by reason 
of that neglect, death ensues, the crime is murder." 

Now this is the law if you don't stretch it, and try to catch 
more fish than the law allows. It is the law as it lies in the 
Text-Books, and is there applied to a single jierson, liainng the 
sole legal charge. 

But as regards these four offenders it is too broad and loose, 
and is not the law of England as appears in the cases to which 
these very text-books refer, and in fifty other cases, well known, 
though not reported by lawyers, but only word for word by the 
newspapers. These are shunned by the lawyers; they are in- 
valuable; but then they are not published and sold by that sacred 
clique. 

However, the cases of criminal omission, though pitiably re- 
duced in number by that childish prejudice, are, I think, fatal to 
this new theory of criminal responsibility in the highest degree 
attaching to persons who have not the sole charge in law of the 
murdered person. 

What will my readers think, and what will the Home Secre- 
tary think, when I tell him that to find in the books a verdict of 
murder by omission I must go back eighty-seven years — to 
a time when jurymen were so used to shed blood like water by 
statute law that they naturally applied even the common law 
with a severity that is now out of date. 

I, who with these eyes have seen a boy of eighteen hanged for 
stealing a horse, though the jury could have saved him, and 
the judge could have saved him with a word, am not disposed to 
rate beyond its value the case of "Rex v. Squires," on which Sir 
T. Hawkins, I think, relies, still less to stretch it ad infinitum, 
where the jury that hanged him restricted it so closely. 

In 1790 the Crown indicted Squires and his wife for murder. 
They had starved a young apprentice, and beaten him cruelly. 
The wife, as to the beating, could not by law prove conjugal in- 
fluence, for she had beaten the boy in her husband's absence, 



84 READIANA. 

which bars that plea. The post-mortem, however, revealed 
starvation, and not the boy's wounds, to be the cause of death. 
The jury found Squires guilty of murder; but they held that 
Mrs. Squires had not in this, as she had iu the blows, acted inde- 
pendently of her husband. She had not intercepted any food 
her husband had given her for the boy. 

If this case is to be acted on in our day, at least we should "not 
garble and take the sanguinary half. The jury acquitted Mrs. 
Squires, a far worse woman than Mrs. P. Staunton, and they 
acquitted her logically. In a case of omission they could not 
convict the husband capitally but by loading him with the whole 
charge, and the whole criminality of a joint act. Does this case, 
looked into and understood, support the new theory of criminal 
responsibiUty, infinitely divisible, without diminution of guilt? 

A leading case of our own day, and therefore a better guide 
for us, is " The Queen v. Bubb and Hook." Elizabeth Bubb 
was a widow with two children, and sister to Richard Hook's 
wife, deceased. Hook invited her into his house, and gave her 
money to keep the family; She fed and clothed her own family, 
and half starved the poor dead sister's. She carried her cruelty 
so far that the neighbors remonstrated often, but Hook looked 
calmly on, and did not mind. By steady degrees this fiendish 
woman murdered Hook's youngest child by starvation and cold. 
She was indicted for murder, '^le jury did not conceal their 
horror, but they used their right, and reduced the crime to man- 
slaughter; but, as that verdict opens the door to lenient sen- 
tences, they guarded the judge in a way that shows how wise 
twelve plain men can he when each of them thinks for himself. 
They brought it in "aggravated manslaughter." Hook was tried 
for manslaughter at the same assize. As he had supplied Bubb 
with means, there was nothing against him but his apathy and 
neglect of his pining child, and liis turning a deaf ear to re- 
monstrances. It was left to the jury to decide wliether tliis was 
culpable neglect, or stupid neglect in a father — not an outsider, 
like Rhodes. They decided for stupid neglect, and acquitted 
Hook. Here is the same principle. They were resolved to put 
the saddle on the right horse, and not upon two horses. Will 
my readers pause, and compare the guUt of the heartless, re- 
lentless fiend Bubb — sole executor of a deadly deed, in spite of 
remonstrances — with the case of Mrs. Patrick Staunton, a wife, 
and under influence, who in her moments of conscience resisted 
the cruelty, and was overpowered ? 

If you divide an apple into four pieces, you have four pieces, 
but not four apples. If, in a case of omission, you could really 
divide the legal charge, and the highest criminal responsibility, 
the effect would not be what Sir J. Hawkins told the jury the 
effect would be — to subdivide and fritter aw^ay the criminal 
responsibility till it should escape the lash of the law, and meet 
no punishment but public reprobation. 

Example — two Welsh parents had an imbecile girl, who pro- 
fessed sanctity and fasting, and the old people made their money 
out of her. Incredulous doctors demanded a test. Parents con- 
sented. Doctors watched night and day, and went at the first 



READIANA. 85 

plunge much deeper than the Stauntons; for they stopped all 
supplies dead short. They killed her quick amongst them. The 
doctors sat round her bed and saw the lamp of life burn out in 
eight days. Vulgar curiosity does not excuse deliberate murder. 
See now if by any quibbling or evasion the conduct of the 
parents can be taken out of murder — as the law laid down for 
the Stauntons, see above — or the doctors cleared of manslaughter. 
Clean stoppage of food is the short cut to murder, with the goal 
in sight all the way. 

InsuflScient supply of food is an uncertain road to man- 
slaughter. The victim may get used to it. Luigi Carnaro 
achieved a vast longevity by no other means than insufficient 
nutriment arrived at by degrees. If divided responsibility leaves 
seven people equally responsible, wliy were not those parents 
and doctors all hung ? 

2. "Imposed by Law, or. Imposed by Contract." 

True. But throughout this case he withheld from the jury 
that when the law and lawful contract are opposed, contract 
prevails. In order to submit to tlie jury some just comments on 
the niggardly wretch, Louis Staunton, and the 20.s. he agreed to 
pay Patrick to house and board his wife, he let in the paltry 
contract as evidence; yet he withheld fi'om the jury the imme- 
diate legal effect of the contract. This was to give Patrick the 
sole charge of the wife, and the sole criminal responsibility of 
the highest degree. 

The legal responsibility passed clean out of Louis by passing 
into Patrick. Had Louis failed to pay weekly, Patrick could 
have sued him. 

Whether a responsibility originally so sacred as a husband's 
could not be revived partially, and in a lower form, by Louis 
constantly visiting his wife and actually seeing her pine away, 
and wliether this would not make him guilty of manslaughter is 
another matter, and one I shall deal with under another head; 
but I complain that the judge withlield his legal knowledge 
from the jury whenever it could serve a prisoner, of which this 
is one example. 

3. — Another is his dead silence as to Mrs. P. Staunton's legal 
position as a wife, and the influence of her husband upon her as 
well as on Rhodes — an influence the law is not unwilling to as- 
sume, though of course it can be rebutted, as whan Mrs. Manning 
was proved to be the instigator of a joint crime. But here the 
husband had by contract the sole legal charge, like Squires in 
1790. 

4. — Illegal and improiJer evidence was admitted, such as no 
prisoner with his mouth closed has ever been assassinated by in 
my time. Clara Brown was allowed to depose to the existence 
of a letter written by Louis Staunton to Alice Rhodes in August, 
1;876. That was allowable, for Rhodes admitted having received 
and lost a letter. But now comes the legal wrong. She was al- 
lowed to own herself a thief as regarded that particular letter, 
and also what the old judges called "a spoliator of evidence." 

As regarded that one letter, I mean she was allowed to depose 



86 READIANA. 

that she had burnt it willfully, and with her own hand, and 
yet she was permitted to take advantage of her own suppres- 
sion of the real letter, to give by memory or imagination 
just so many words as the Crown Solicitor, who got up the 
case, thought might suffice to hang Louis Staunton by an equivo- 
cation pointing to murder, and an admission of long criminal 
intimacy lo prove adultery before as well as after marriage. 
"Spoliation of evidence" does not figure mucli in the text- 
books. You must go wide and deep to find the hundreds 
of cases that lie behind all the older maxims of law, "As- 
sume everything to the discredit of a spoliator of evidence" 
is the maxim, and the person who destroys any written docu- 
ment divining its importance is certainly a spoliator of evidence. 
But if the good, though almost obsolete, phrase be objected to, 
I will resign it and stick to the substance. Why, even at Nisi 
Prius, if a witness, to decide a case, swore he received a letter 
from a party who could not be put in the box, and proved that he 
really had received a letter from that person of some kind or 
other, would be be allowed to say, " I burned the letter, seeing 
its importance; the writer cannot be called to contradict me, so 1 
remember enough of the contents to win this verdict, £50,000, for 
the party who pids me in the box'''' — would not the judge hesitate 
to let the jury's mind be prejudiced by hearing this witness's 
garbled quotations ? If another hand had burned it, well and 
good; but surely not when he had burned it himself, and so put 
the court entirely at the mercy of partial quotation and misquo- 
tation. I am of opinion, subject to the decision of the judges — 
and it is quite time they sat to review criminal cases — that this 
sliam reproduction of a selected and garbled part of a written 
letter the witness had willfully destroyed was legally inadmis- 
sible against two prisoners whose mouths were sealed. 

I shall show in my next that this violation, not of some pe- 
dantic rule of evidence, but of its very fundamental principles, 
lets a whole vein of romantic error into the case, and shall ex- 
pose generally the false system by which the order of the facts 
was dislocated and the facts falsified. 

Yours faithfully, 

CHARLES READE. 

I beg to ackdowledge with thanks some insulting letters from 
people who don't sign their names, and some encouraging ones 
from ladies and gentlemen who do. 



SIXTH LETTER. 

October l^h, 1877. 

Sir, — In reply to reasonable comments let me say I have not 
put forward that bra?ich of law which concerns the aiding and 
abetting any kind of murdei-, whether by commission or omis- 
sion, because the judge did not lay that down to the jury, and 
he was bound to do so if that was the law he rehed on. 

He never treated Louis Staunton as an " accessory before 
the fact," which under this head of law was the only cap that 



RPJADIANA. 87 

could be made to fit him. He never told the jury what pre- 
cise evidence the law demands against a man who has made a 
niggai'dly contract contemplating, by its very niggardliness, the 
indefinite life of the victim, ere a jury is to pronounce tliat he 
did "procure, counsel, command and abet" the murder of that 
person. 

Of course no lawyer will pretend that a man living out of the 
house of murder can be accessory at the fact, or what the text 
books call " a principal in the first degree;' nor will any lawyer 
deny that if he lives out of the house, but procures, counsels, 
commands, or abets the murder, beyond doubt, he can be an 
accessory before the fact, or a principal in the second degree. 
But there must be high evidence and direct evidence, and if 
spoken or ^v^ritten words are relied on they must be addressed to 
the very person wlio does the murder, and must be unequivocal. 
A doubtful phrase addressed to Rhodes, who took no pait in the 
murder, is not at all the kind of evidence required by all the 
books and all the cases. See the word ' ' accessory " in any text 
book or report whatever. 

The Facts. 

In our Criminal Court, where the prisoners, the only people 
who really know the ins and outs of the case, are not allowed 
to open their Hps, and correct any of the shallow guesswork 
that is going on about them in their astonished ears, one great 
abuse like that I denounced in my last letter is sure to let in 
many'more. Clara Brown, the one witness on whom the case for 
the Crown really depends, was allowed by the judge to swear 
she had destroyed a letter, and yet to cite so mucli of it, correct- 
ly or incorrectly, as fitted the two horns of the' prosecution. 
That abuse led at once to another. This model witness was al- 
lowed another privilege the rules of evidence do not grant — 
viz., to argue the case. For this the defendants are indebted 
to their counsel. 

He asked whether she understood the sentence about Har- 
riet being "out of the way" to refer to her death. To this 
question she replied "Yes." 

Frentjh counsel surprised by a prosecution would immediately 
have had a personal conference with tlie prisoners, and would 
have asked the girl questions that would have greatly benefited 
the prisoners. The jury, hearing a witness swear to an inter- 
pretation of a doubtful phrase, were not aware this was not 
evidence, and ought severely to be rejected from their minds. 
So one abuse led to another, and it is not too much to say that 
this imaginary letter, with the witness's black-heai-ted interpre- 
tation, is the rope that is to hang Louis Staunton. 

Well, such a rope of sand has never hung an Englishman in 
my day. It is pitiable to see how little, if anything, that can 
even by com-tesy be called mental power, was brought to bear 
by twelve men of the world on this quotation of a letter with- 
out its contents, one of the stalest frauds in the world and also 
in literature of every kind, especially controversial theology. 



88 KEADIANA. 

Permit me to test this imaginary extract from what was 
proved, I think, to be a real letter, by one or two sure 
methods of which I am not the inventor. 

Have tbose twelve gentlemen counted the number of words a 
young servant girl swore she had remembered in their exact 
order for nine mouths or more, though she had burned the letter, 
and the subject had never been recalled to her mind till she fell 
into the hands of the prosecution? 

The words are sixty-two in number. 

" My own darling, — I was very sorry to see you cry when I 
left you. It seems as though it never must be, but there will be 
a time when Harriet will be out of the way, and we shall be 
happy together. Dear Alice, you must know how I love you by 
this time. We have been together two years now." 

Now, sir, even if those fatal words about a time when Harriet 
will be out of the way were ever written without some explana- 
tory context, I think the jury ought to have been throughout 
solemnly warned and guarded against the illogical interpreta- 
tion of them. The just nile of interpretation is that you should 
always prefer a literal to a vague or metaphorical interpretation. 
The words " out of the way" mean out of the way; they don't 
mean dead. A man can say " dead," and if Rhodes was pro- 
jecting murder with him, why should he not have said so? 

The next rule is, that you prefer the interpretation which the 
writer himself confesses by his own act, and the next is, that 
you prefer the interpretation that is first fulfilled in order of 
time. Now, it was Louis, the writer of the words, who took a 
farm soon after, settled Harriet with Patrick, and so got her out 
of the way, and lived in smooth adultery with Rhodes, whereas 
it was other people who killed Harriet Staunton, and nine 
months afterward. But I shall now show the extract as sworn 
to was never written. 

1st objection. — It is too long, and too short, which two traits 
can never meet in a genuine extract. 

A. Too long for a servant girl to remember, word for word, 
nine months after bearing it. 

B. Too short. Louis Staunton was not preparing his own 
prosecution. It was not on the cards of mere accident that he 
should furnish in sixty-two words two equivocal expressions — 
one establishing a long adulterous intercovirse of which there 
is no corroborative proof, but the reverse; and another quibble 
projecting distant murder, of which there is no corroborative 
proof, since Harriet was well used for months after. 

2. The line reminding her she had been his mistress for two 
years is worded by a woman, and not by Staunton or any man. 
Decent women, like Clara Brown have a delicate vocabulary un- 
known to men. " We have been together," which means every- 
thing the prosecution wanted, but says nothing at all, is a 
woman's word for criminal connection. 

3. The statement itself is not true, and from that you must 



READIAyA. 89 

argue backward against the genuineuess of the quotation, since 
he would not say this to a girl who knew better.* 

4. The witness could remember nothing but her lesson: sixty- 
two consecutive words, all neat and telling, and meeting the 
two great views of the prosecution : but, that done, a blank — a 
total blank; not six consecutive words. Tiiis is barefaced. 
Daniel Defoe would have managed better. He would have 
armed the witness with ten consecutive words on some matter 
quite foreign to the objects of the prosecution. The quotation 
is fabricated. 

The process has nothing exceptional in it, nor is there any one 
to blame, except the Court, for letting in parole evidence about 
a written document destroyed by the witness herself. 

Allow 10,000 such witnesses, and, if the case is ably prepared, 
you must, in tlie very nature of things, have 10,000 inaccurate 
quotations, all leaning toward the side that calls the witness. 

The people who get up a prosecution have but one way of deal- 
ing with such a witness. She comes to them remembering a 
word here or there. She is advised to speak the truth and take 
time. But, as the conference proceeds, she is asked whether 
she happens to remember anything of such a kind ? She is very 
ductile, and forces her memory a bit in the direction she in- 
stinctively sees is desired. The very person who is examining her 
with an ex parte \ie\v does not see that she is so wax-like as 
she is. 

Add a small grain of self-deception on botli sides, and a mixt- 
ure of truth and falsehood comes into the unwary and most 
inconsistent court, which stops Louis Staunton's mouth, yet lets 
in a worse kind of evidence than the prisoner's own, viz., this 
horrible hodge-podge of memory, imagination, and promjiting, 
which, in the very nature of things, and by the mere infirmity of 
the human mind, must he a lie. 

Tliat a man should die only because he is tried in England. 
Bring your minds to bear on this, my countrymen. If an igno- 
rant man, like this Staunton, is defended in a suit for fifty-one 
pounds, he can go into the witness-box and explain all the 
errors of the plaintiff, if any; but if he is tried for his life, 
which is dearer to every man than all the money in the world, 
he is not allowed to say one word to the jury, if he has counsel. 
Now, in France he may speak after his counsel have done mud- 
dling his case, but here with heartless mockery, when Ignorance 
all round has hanged him, he is allowed to speak — to whom? 
To the judge. On what? The nice quibbles of the law, but not 
on facts and motives — that being the one thing he can never do, 
and this being the thing he could generally do, and flood the 
groping Court with light, especially as to his true motives and 
the extenuating cu-cumstances of the case. By this system the 
blood-thirsty murderer, who chooses his time, aiid slays swiftly 
in the dark, gains an advantage he cannot have in the wiser 
Courts of Europe. But God help the malefactor who is not an 

* Since this letter was written, it has been proved to be a falsehood. 
The criminal connection was hardly one year old. 



90 READIANA. 

habitual criminal, or one of the deepest dye, but a mixed sinner, 
who has glided from folly into sin, and" from sin into his first 
crime, and who lias been fool as well as villain. His mouth is 
closed, and all the extenuating circumstances that mouth could 
always reveal are hidden with it, or, as in this case, grossly and 
foully perverted into aggravating circumstances. 

This is very unfair. The Nation will see it some day. At 
present what is to be done ? After all, thank God. it is a free 
country, and one in which bad law is sometimes corrected by 
just men. 

To all such I appeal against the rope of sand I have had to un- 
twist in this letter. 

The post has enabled me to do something more: to resist foul 

{(lay and garbled quotations and those most dangerous of all 
ies, equivoques in language, such as " Harriet out of the way,'' 
the very kind of lies Holy Writ ascribes to Satan, and the great 
poets of every age have described as hellish, which they are. 

I resolved to give Louis Staunton, what that den of iniquity 
and imbecility, the Central Criminal Court, did not give him, 
one little chance of untwisting that rope of sand, although he 
has the misfortune not to be a Frenchman. I conveyed a short 
letter to Mr. Louis Staunton through the proper authorities, re- 
questing him to try and remember the entire matter of a certain 
letter he had unquestionably written to Alice Rhodes in August, 
1876, and to send it to me verbatim. Some delay took place 
while my letter was submitted to authorities outside the jail, but 
Fair Play prevailed, and now I append the letter to my own, 
which is of less value. I send it all the same, because I have 
looked narrowly into that of Staunton's, and I don't see any of 
that self-evident mendacity I have felt it my duty to point out 
in the garbled quotation the rope of sand. This letter, at all 
events, may be true. For here I see youth, with its selfish vices, 
not looking mouths ahead, either for good or bad, but getting 
Harriet out of the way without a metaphor, to enjoy the sweet 
vice his self-indulgent soul was filled with, and not with long, 
cold-blooded schemes of murder such* as belong to more hard- 
ened natures than this, who, we learn from the Crown itself, and 
on oath, sat down and cried because his wife upset the house. 
The following is 

Louis Staunton's Letter. 

Maidstone Jail, October Uih, 1872. 
Sir, — I duly received your letter of the 9th inst., and now beg 
to reply to it. The letter in question I wrote to Alice Rhodes on 
or about August 17, 1876. The facts are these: I had several 
times promised to take Alice Rhodes down to Brighton for a 
week, but had been prevented from doing so. But on Saturday, 
August 14, Mrs. Staunton, Alice Rhodes, and myself, went down 
to Cudham, for the purpose of leaving Mrs. Staunton there, that 
we might go to Brighton on the Tuesday; but on the Monday I re- 
ceived a telegram to say my father was worse. My brother and 
myself immediately came up to London, leaving Alice Rhodes 
and Mrs. Staunton at Cudham. I then wrote her this letter: 



READIANA. 91 

" My own Darling,—! know you will be sorry to hear that 
ray poor dear father passed away yesterday. This is a sad blow to 
me, but we aU have our troubles. Our trip must now be put off 
again. It seems as if it is not to be; but I wi)l arrange another 
time to get Harriet out of the way, so you must not be disap- 
pointed. I shall have to remain down home for a few days, so 
Hairiet had better stop down with you." 

I believe I have now given you word for word what I said in 
this letter. I have thought well over it, and cannot remember 
saying anything morel What I meant by " It seems as if it is 
not to be," was our going to Brighton, and of getting " Harriet 
out of the way," that she might not know anything about it. 
This is the whole truth of the letter. 

I am, Sir, 

Yours obediently, 

LOUIS STAUNTON. 
Chakles Reade, Esq. 

The Public is to understand that I deal fairly with the Pow- 
erful Journal which has done me the honor to allow me to ex- 
press boldly my unalterable convictions. I do not write letters 
and say "Thus said Staunton;" I tender you this handwriting, 
begging you to do me the honor to keep it, and show it to few 
or many as you think pi'oper. I do not lead witnesses as I think 
Clara Brown was led — unconsciously, no doubt. My short letter, 
to which this is a reply, lies in Maidstone Jail. I can't remem- 
ber what I write, like this young sinner, nor imagine what other 
people write — like Miss Brown 'plus an attorney's clerk. But I 
am sure it is a short line, just asking the man to send the truth. 
He looks on himself as a dying man; has no hope of saving 
himself; and I think he has come pretty near the truth in his 
letter. Yours faithfully, 

CHARLES READE. 

P.S. — Now that I have opened the dumb creature's mouth 
which that beastly court, the disgrace of Europe, had closed, 
who doubts the real meaning of the letter, and that the writer 
bftd A^Uit^rj^ i^ view, and had not Homicide. 



THE LEGAL VOCABULARY. 

To THE Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette." 

Sir, — Now those swift-footed hares, my eloquent contem- 
porai'ies, have galloped over Diblanc's trial, may I ask you, in 
the name oi' humanity, to let the tortoise crawl over it with his 
microscopic eye? Where female culprits are to be judged, a 
patient drudge, who has studied that sex profoundly in various 
walks of life, including Diblanc's, is sometimes a surer exponent 
of facts than is a learned lawyer. I will keep strictly within 
the limits of the legal defense. The Crown used Diblanc as its 



93 READIANA. 

witness to the killing, and this, by a rule of law which is inex- 
orable, and governs alike a suit or an indictment, let in the 
prisoner's explanations as evidence. But there are degrees of 
evidence . what she said against herself was first-class evidence; 
what she said favorable to herself was low evidence, to be re- 
ceived when it is contradicted neither by a living witness nor a 
clear fact. I keep witliin this circle, traced by the judge him- 
self, simply premising that I have seen many a prisoner ac- 
quitted on his own explanation of motives thus made admissible, 
though poor, evidence, by the prosecutor. 

Now did the criminal seek the victim, or the victim her? 
Where was the crime committed ? In the kitchen. And what 
is the kitchen ? It is a poor man's cottage on the ground-floor 
of a gentleman's house. No paper — no carpet — stone floor — it is 
made like a servant's home out of contempt; but the result of 
that contempt is, that the female domestic feels at home in 
it, soul and body. It is the servant's house, and the cook's 
castle and workshop. To come and insult her there galls her 
worse than in the gentlefolk's part. Wliat a lady feels if a cook 
walks up into the drawing-room to affront her, that the cook 
feels if the mistress comes down into her castle to affront 
her. But a kitchen is something else; it is an arsenal of 
deadly weapons, with every one of which the cook is familiar. 
The principal are — a hatchet to chop wood, a rolling-pin, a 
steel to sharpen knives, a cleaver, an enormous poker, a bread 
knife, carving knife, etc. Into this cook's castle and arsenal of 
lethal weapons comes Diblanc's mistress on a Sunday forenoon, 
when even a cook is entitled to a little bit of peace and some 
little reduction of her labor, if possible, and gives an inconsider- 
ate order. The cook says there's no need for that; dinner is not 
till seven. This offends the mistress, and she threatens to dis- 
charge her on the spot. The cook says she wiU go directly if her 
month's wages are paid her. " No," says the mistress, " I will 
keep you your time; but I wiU make you suffer." Here there 
is a lacuna; but the climax was that the mistress called this 
poor, hard-working woman, in her castle and workshop, a pros- 
titute, and dwelt upon the epithet. Then the cook, goaded to 
fury, took, not one of the murderous weapons close at hand, but 
sprang at her mistress's throat, and griped it with such fury 
that she broke the poor creature's jaw and throttled her on the 
spot, and probably killed her on the spot, whatever she may 
have said to the contrary. The deed done, the criminal is all 
amazement, vacillation, and uncertainty in word and deed. 
Her deeds: She carried the body wildly here and there; she puts 
a rope round its neck in a mad attempt to pass the act off for 
suicide; she resolves on flight; she has not the means; she casts 
her eyes round, and sees the safe with money in it; she breaks 
it open, and takes enough for her purpose; she does not pillage; 
elie steals the means of flight; she robs in self-defense. Her 
words: "I leave for Paris this evening." Then a horror falls 
on her like a tliunderclap. " No, I shall never see Paris again, 
not even my parents." Is there nothing human in this sudden 
cry of a poor savage awaking to her crime 'i "I shall try tQ 



READIANA. 93 

leave for America." So, then, she goes out intending to sail to 
America, and goes just where she did not mean to go — to Paris. 
She gets there, and instantly pays a just debt with the money 
she no longer needfed to save her life. In other words, she is 
no more a real thief than a real murderer, as the common-sense 
of mankind understands the words. "With the light thus re- 
flected by her subsequent conduct, all vacillation and inability 
to carry out a design, I return to the homicide and its true in- 
terpretation. - 

Fact goes by precedent as well as law, and, strange to say 
lawyers, those slaves of precedent, often forget this. Now, 
what does experience or precedent teach us with regard to the 
murder of adults by adults? Is the open hand the weapon mur- 
der selects? It is the weapon cold-blooded robbery has often 
selected to avoid murder. But is it the weapon murder has often 
selected? Certainly not. But Diblanc's defense rests on far 
stronger ground. The point of her defense is this: She stood in 
an arsenal of deadly leeapons, and yet avoided them, and used 
the non-lethal iveapon — her hare hands— being maddened to fury 
and burning for revenge, but not positively intending to murder 
either before the attack or at the moment of the attach. These 
facts, minutely examined, tear the theory of "premeditation" 
up by the roots; but you cannot tear that theory up by the roots 
without displacing the theory of " intention," and letting in the 
defendant's evidence that she did not intend to kill Madame Riel. 
And this brings me naturally to the nature and extent of the 
provocation that stung her to fury. 

Mr. Baron Channell says that no mere words can by provocation 
reduce willful killing to manslaughter. Granted; but I think 
this applies only to killing with lethal weapons. Where two 
things combine — where A receives a foul provocation in language 
from B, and, avoiding lethal weapons close to his hand, kills B 
with the bare hand, I think the jury have a right to call that 
manslaughter if they please. A calls B a liar; B knifes him. Mur- 
der. B calls C a liar; C fells him with a blow, and kills him. 
Manslaughter. Oh, but throttling is worse than striking. Ay, 
worse in a man, but not in a woman, because women do not fight 
with the fist; they aluxiys go at each other with the claws, and 
no murder done one time in a thousand. If we are to judge 
women we really must not begin by being pig-headed idiots, and 
confounding them entirely, mind and limbs, with men. The 
truth is, language contaiij^ no word with which a man can strike 
a man to the heart, in his own person, as a woman can strike a 
woman with a word. It is at once stupid and cruel the way 
in which this poor creatm-e's provocation has been slurred 
over. The evidence is all in favor of her continence. When out 
of place in Paris she fell in debt directly; a plain proof labor 
was her only way of getting bread. Here in London it comes 
out that her wages were everything to her. She wanted to go, 
but could not for want of a little money. Why, her very 
strength, about which so much twaddle has been uttered, was 
not the strength of the individual, it was only the strength that 
comes to women of her age by an honorable, laborious, and con- 



64 READIANA. 

tinent life. And is it a small thing that to such a woman, work- 
ing in her kitchen for her bread, another woman, whose life was 
not laborious and honorable like hers, sljoiild come and say, 
" You are a prostitute " ? " Facile judicat q(«i pauca considerat." 
We must consider not the insult only, but tbe quarter whence 
it came; and we shall find tlie utmost limits of verbal provoca- 
tion have been reached in Diblanc's case= The time— Sunday 
morning, when the world gets peace, and even cooks hope for it. 
The place — her own kitchen. The insult — the most intolerable 
the mind can conceive; and a lie. Tiie result — ^honest labor and 
continence uses none of the lethal weapons at hand, but took 
luxury and foul-mouthed slander by the throat. Luxury's arm 
was pithless against insulted labor and continence, and a crime 
was consummated, when between two working women there 
would only have been a fight. 

It is the misfortune of women that few men except one or 
two writers of fiction, can put themselves in a woman's place, 
and so qualify themselves to judge her in these obscure cases. 
But let me put a man, as nearly as I can, in this woman's place. 
A man is with his wife, whom he loves as dearly as Dfblanc 
loves herself. Another man comes and calls that woman a 
prostitute to her face and his; there's a hatchet on one side of 
the husband, and a carving knife on the other. The husband 
takes neither, but seizes the slanderer by the throat and 
squeezes the life out of him. Would that man be indicted for 
murder ? I doubt it. Would Baron Channell ask a conviction 
for murder? I doubt it. If he did, no jury in England would 
convict. Yet here the provocation is purely verbal, and the 
killing identical with Diblanc's. 

Let me now, without blaming any living person, draw the 
attention of public men to the stereotyped trickery and equivo- 
cation by means of which the death of Marguerite Diblanc has 
been compassed — in theory; for she is not to die, I conclude. 
Some lawyer, in the name of a humane Sovereign, draws a 
bloodthirsty, exaggerated indictment, and says Diblanc slew 
Madame Riel willfully and with malice aforethought. The 
evidence contradicts the malice and the aforethought, which are 
the very sting of the indictment, and the jury demur. "Oh, 
let that flea stick in tJie wall," says the judge, " we don't go by 
Johnson's Dictionary here; 'aforethought,' that means 'con- 
temporaneous' in our vocabulary, and 'malice' means rage, 
passion, anything you like — except jnah'ce, of course. All you 
have got to do is to disregard the tert^ of the indictment, and if 
she killed the woman at all say she killed her with malice afore- 
thought," The jury, who are generally novices and e.isily over- 
come by the picture of a gentleman thatched with hoisehair, 
assent with reluctance, and recommend the prisoner to mercy, 
thereby giving their verdict the lie; for if the indictment was 
not an impudent falsehood and their verdict another she would 
be a most unfit subject for mercy. This bastard verdict which 
says "Yes" with a trumpet and "No" with a penny whistle 
being obtained by persuasion, the judge goes coolly back to Dr. 
J./Lnson, whom he has disowned for a time in order to get a 



ME A DIANA. 95 

verdict, and condemns the woman to death for having killed 
her fellow-creature with malice aforethought, as Johnson 
understands the words. But, as he too knows it is all humbug, 
and a verbal swindle invented by dead fools and forced upon 
him, he takes measures to refer it to a layman called the Home 
Secretary, who is to find straightforwardness, sense, manhood, 
and, above all, English for the whole lot. 

Now. sir, I agree with the writer of your able article of tlie 
I5th of June, that the way out of this is to enlarge, purify, and 
correct the legal vocabulary. The judges are in a hole. With 
two words — *' manslaughter " and "murder," — they are expect- 
ed to do the Avork of three or four words; and how can they ? 
It is impossible. Enlarge this vocabulary, and the most salu- 
tary consequences will flow in. Sweep away "manslaughter." 
which is an idiotic word meaning more than murder in etymol- 
ogy, and less in law, and divide unlawful killing into three 
heads — homicide, willful homicide, murder. Then let it be en- 
acted that henceforward it shall be lawful for juries to under- 
stand all words used in indictments, declarations, pleadings; 
etc., in their plain and grammatical sense, and to defy all other 
interpretations whatever. Twelve copies of every indictment 
ought to be in the] jury box, and every syllable of those indict- 
ments proved, whether bearing on fact or motive, or else the 
prisoner acquitted. Neither the Crown nor the private suitor 
should be allowed to exaggerate without smarting for it in the 
verdict, just, as in the world overloaded invective recoils upon 
the shooter. 

I am, sir, yours faithfully, 

CHARLES READE. 
Magdalen College, Oxford, 
June 17th, 1872. 



COLONEL BAKER'S SENTENCE. 

To THE Editor of the "Daily Telegraph." 

• Sir, — -A great many journals and weeklies have told the public 
that an English judge has passed too lenient a sentence on Col- 
onel Baker because he belongs to the upper classes. Some have 
added that the same judge had inflicted a severe sentence on 
certain gas stokers. an8 so we have a partial judge upon the 
bench. This is a grave conclusion, and, if true, would be de- 
plorable. You would yourself regret it, and therefore will, I 
am sure, permit me to show you, by hard facts, that all this is 
not only untrue, but the exact opposite of the truth in every 
particular. Fact 1. The proceedings against Baker commenced 
with an application for delay and a specaal jury. Here was an 
opportunity to favor him. Tlie judge rejected the application, 
and he was tried by a common jury. 2. On the trial the prose- 
cuting counsel attacked him with a severity that is now uu- 
usual, and used a false comparison to lead the jury further than 



96 BEADIAXA. 

the evidence warranted. 3. In contrast to this, Baker was de- 
fended with strict moderation. In France the accused speaks 
as well as his counsel, but in England his own mouth is closed, 
and we must assume instructions and give him the credit or dis- 
credit due to his line of defense. Now, there was a point in the 
plaintiff's evidence which to my mind is womanly and charm- 
ing, but still, before a common jury, Mr. Hawkins could have 
done almost what he liked with it. It appeared that when the 
young lady was on the doorstep, she told her assailant he must 
bold her or she would fall. Thoy little know the power of coun- 
sel who doubt that, by a series of sly ironical questions on this 
point, the case could have been weakened by ridicule, and the 
plaintiff tortured. Since the lower orders have been dragged 
mto this, it should be considered that every one of them would 
have so defended himself, except those who had got rid of the 
case before by shoving the girl off the step instead of holding 
her. "That" is the sort of men they are." My brilliant con- 
temporaries know nothing about them. How should they, 
being in an exalted sphere ? 4. The common jury cleared him 
of a criminal assault, and found him guilty of an indecent as- 
sault. My brilliant contemporaries hanker after the higher is- 
sue, and would hke to see it in the judgment, though it was not 
in the verdict. But that would be to juggle with the constitu- 
tional tribunal, and be inexcusable in a judge. 5. Mr. Justice 
Brett dwelt on the enormity of the offense, and admitted only 
one palliating circumstance — viz., that the culprit, when he 
found the lady would risk her life sooner than be insulted, came 
to his senses, and showed a tardy compunction. This was so; 
and Colonel Baker's line of defense before the magistrates and 
before the court, entitled him to this small palliation. 6. Wit- 
nesses were called to character, with a view to mitigating pun- 
ishment. Now, when a culprit of the lower orders can do this 
effectually, it always reduces punishment — sometimes one half 
or more. Were it to go for nothing where a gentleman has com- 
mitted his first public crime, there would be gross partiality in 
favor of the lower orders, and an utter defiance of precedent. 7. 
The punishment inflicted was a fine, £500, and a year's imprison- 
ment as a first-class misdemeanant. My brilliant contempora- 
ries think that a poor man would have been much?more punished. 
Now let us understand one another. Do they mean a poor man 
who had so assaulted a lady, or a poor man who had so assault- 
ed a poor woman? Their language only fits the latter view. 
Very well, then. My brilliant contemporaries have eaten the in- 
sane root that takes the reason prisoner. Every day in the year 
men of the lower orders commit two thousand such assaults upon 
women of the lower orders, and it is so little thought of that the 
culprits are rarely brought to justice at all. When they are, 
it is a police magistrate, and not a jury, the women apply 
to. It is dealt with on the spot by a small fine or a very 
short imprisonment. Colonel Baker, had he been a navvy, 
would have got one month. My brilliant contemporaries go 
to their imagination for their facts. I. poor drudge, go to one 
out of twenty folio notebooks in which I have entered, alpha- 



READIANA, m 

betically, the curious facts of the day for many a year. The fines 
for indecent assaults range from five pounds to twenty, A mongst 
the examples is one that goes far beyond Baker's case, for the 
culprit had recourse to chloroform. I call this a criminal assault. 
The magistrate, however, had a doubt, and admitted the culprit 
to bail. At the expiration of the bail the Lucretia in humble 
life walked into the comt on Tarquin's arm, and begged to with- 
draw the plaint. She had married him in that brief interval. 
And that, O too imaginative contemporaries, "is tlie sort of 
women the J axe.'" The magistrate scolded them both, and said 
it was collusion to defeat the law. He lacked humor, poor man. 
When a lady or a gentleman is one of the parties, that imme- 
diately elevates the offense. I have a case in my list that re- 
sembles Baker's in some respects. It was a railway case — the 
offender a gentleman, the plaintiff a resiJectable milliner. This 
was dealt with at quarter sessions; fine £200, no imprisonment. 
In Craft's case the parties were reversed. Craft, a carpenter, at 
Farrington, kissed by force the daughter of a neighboring clergy- 
man. She took him before a jury, and he got six months. But 
her Majefty remitted three months of this sentence. 

I am informed there was a case the other day, and a bad one — 
punishment two months. But I will not be sure, for I have not seen 
it. Of this I am absolutely sure, that Baker's sentence is severe be- 
yond all precedent. His fine is more than double the highest 
previous fine His imprisonment, if not shortened, will be four 
times the term of Craft's, and about twelve times what, if 
the female had been m humble life, a blackguard by descent 
and inheritance would have got, and he is both fined and im- 
prisoned. I think it most proper a gentleman should be 
more severely pmiished for so heinous an offense. But it is not 
proper that facts should be turned clean topsy-turvy, and the 
public humbugged into believing that the lower order of 
people are treated more severely in such cases, when, on the 
contrary, they are treated with gross partiality; still less is it 
proper that these prodigious eiTorsof fact should be used to cast a 
slurupon the just reputation of a very sagacious, careful, and inde- 
pendent judge. To drag the gas stokers' case into this question 
is monstrous. Law has many branches, and a somewhat arbi- 
trary scale of punishments that binds the judges more or less. 
As a rule, it treats offenses against the person more lightly than 
offenses against property — ay, even when marks of injury have 
been left upon the person for months. Now, the law of England 
abhors conspiracy, and Mr. Justice Brett foimd the law; hedid 
not make it, nor yet did his grandfather. The gas stokers' sen- 
tence had nothing on earth to do with their birth and parentage. 
They were representative men — the ringleadei-s of a gi'eat con- 
spiracy, and the only offenders nailed in a case where our jails 
ought to have been filled with the blackguards. It was a heart- 
less, egotistical and brutal conspiracy; its object a fraud, and its 
instrument a public calamity. The associated egotists inflicted 
darkness on a great city dxiring the hours of traffic. They not 
only incommoded a vast public cruelly; they also added to the 
perils of the city, and most likely injured life and limb. The 



98 RE A DIANA. 

judge who punished these deUberate and combhied criminals se- 
verely was the mouth-piece of an offended and injured public, 
and not of any cUque whatever; for no clique monopolizes hght, 
nor can do without it, least of all the poor. He gave his reasons 
at the time, and the press approved them, as anybody can see 
by turning to the files. To these facts, sir, I beg to add a grain 
of common sense. What is there in a British colonel to dazzle 
a British judge ? The judge is a much greater man in society 
and in the country; and in court he is above the Princes of the 
Blood, for he represents the pei-son and wields the power of the 
sovereign. Class distinctions do not much affect the judges of 
our day. They sit too high above all classes. One or two of 
them, I see, share the universal foible, and truckle a little to the 
press. If a modern judge is above that universal weakness, he 
is above everything but his conscience and his God. Perhaps 
my brilliant contemporaries have observed that solitary foible 
in our judges, and are resolved that Mr. Justice Brett shall not 
overrate their ability to gauge his intellects or liis character. If 
that was their object, they have written well. 

CHARLES READE. 

August 30/A, 1875. 



PEOTEST AGAINST THE MURDER AT LEWES 

JAIL. 
To THE Editor of the "Daily News." 

Sir, — I claim the right of a good citizen to disown, before God 
and man, a wicked and insane act just committed in the name 
of the country, and therefore in mine, unless I publicly dissent. 

An Englishman named Nurdock was killed yesterday at Lewes 
by the ministers of the law, for a crime the law of England does 
not visit with death. The crime was manslaughter. It is not 
possible that even an English judge could so mistake the law as 
really to take the man's crime for murder. It was destitute, not 
of one, two, or three, but of all the features that the law requires 
in murder. On the other hand, it had all the features that dis- 
tinguish manslaughter. There was no murderous weapon — 
there was no weapon at all; no premeditation, no malice. The 
act was done in the confusion, hurry, and agitation of a struggle, 
and that struggle was commenced, not by the homicide but the 
victim. 

As respects the animus at the time, it is clear the violence was 
done alio intuitu; the prisoner was fighting, not to kill but to 
escape; and that he never, from first to last aimed at killing ap- 
peared further by his remaining in the neighborhood, and his 
surprise and ignorance of his victim's death. In a word, it was 
manslaughter in its mildest form. I have seen a boy of eighteen 
hanged for stealing a horse. It was a barbarous act, but it was 
the law. I have seen a forger hanged. It was cruel, but it was 
the law. But now, for the first time (while murderers are con- 



R KADI ANA. ^ 

stantly escaping the law), I have seen an English head fail by the 
executioner in defiijnce of the law. I wash this man's blood 
from my hands, and from my honorable name. I disown that 
Ulpgal act, and the public will follow me. I cannot say to-day 
■9-here the blame lies, aod in what proportions; but I will cer- 
tainly find out; and as certainly all those concerned in itpopulo 
respondebimt et mihi, 

CHARLES READE. 



STAEVATION EEFUSTNG PLENTY. 
To THE Editor of the " Daily Telegraph." 

Sir, — The journals recorded last week the death by starvation 
of a respectable seamstress. Now, the death by starvation of 
a single young working woman is a blot upon civilization and a 
disgrace to humanity. It implies also great misery and much 
demi -starvation in the class that furnishes the extreme example. 
The details in this case were pitiable, and there were some com- 
ments in the Daily Telegraph well adapted to make men feel and 
think even if they never knew hunger personally. They have 
set me thinking for one, and I beg to offer my thoughts. I have 
observed, in a general way, that the world is full of live counter- 
parts, by which I mean people that stand in need of otlier peo- 
ple, who stand equally in need of them ; only these two live 
counterparts of the social system cannot find each other out, 
Distance and ignorance keep them apart. Of late the advertise- 
ment sheet has done ,much to cure that, and is an incalculable 
boon to mankind. But as there are counterpart individuals, so 
there are counterpart classes, and I shall ask your assistance to- 
bring two of these classes together and substitute for starvation 
repletion. I see before me, say, two thousand lionest, virtuous, 
industriovis yoimg women, working hard and half starved; and 
I see before me at least twenty thousand other women holding- 
out plentj^ in both hands, and that plentj^ rejected with scorn 
by young women of very little merit; or, if not rejected, ac- 
cepted only under vexatious and galling conditions imposed by 
the persons to be benefited. 

Aid me, theo, sir, to introduce to a starving class an oppressed 
and insulted and pillaged class which offers a clean, healthy 
lodging and no rent to pay, butcher's meat twice a day, food at 
all hours, tea, beer, and from £13 to £18 a year pocket-money, 
in return for a few hours of healthy service per day. To speak 
more plainly, domestic servants have become rare, owing 
to wholesale and most injudicious exportation; and al- 
though their incapacity in their business has greatly in- 
creased — especially the incapacity of cooks — they impose 
not only higher wages, but intolerable conditions. The way the 
modest householder is ground down by these young ladies is a 
grievance too* large to be dealt with under this head, and will 
probably lead to a masters' and mistresses' league. Suffice it 
here to say that full forty thousand domestic servants are now 



lOU MEADIANA. 

(iiigaged yeai'ly iii London on written characters, and thirty 
thousand without a character; and I speak within bounds when 
I say that there are good places by the dozen open to any re- 
spectable seamstress. There are mistresses by the thousand 
who, in the present dearth of good and civil servants, wovdd try 
a respectable novice. A respectable seamstress has always haft 
a character, for slie is trusted with materials and does not steal 
them; and the oppressed mistresses in question would forgive a 
few fault? in housework at first starting in a woman who could 
compensate them by skill with the needle — no mean addition to 
a servant's value. I now turn to the seamstresses. Why do 
tliey sit hungry to the dullest of all labor, and hold aloof from 
domestic service at a time when ladies born are beginning to 
recognize how much better off is the rich housemaid than the 
poor lady? I suspect the seamstresses are deluded by two 
words, "liberty "and "wages." They think a female servant 
has no liberty, and that her principal remuneration is her 
" wages." 

I address myself to these two errors. Oiir liberty is restrained 
by other means than bolts and bars. It is true that a female 
servant cannot run into the streets whenever she likes. But 
she sometimes goes on errands and takes her time. She slips 
out eternally, and gets out one evening at least every week. 
Then, as to wages, the very word is a delusion as far as she is 
concerned. Her wages are a drop in the ocean of lier remuner- 
ation. She comes out of a single room, where slie pigs witli 
her relations, and she receives as remuneration for her services 
a nice clean room all to herself, the market price of which, and 
the actual cost to her employer, is at least 6s. per week; and the 
use of a kitchen, and in some cases of a servants' hall, which is 
worth 2s. per week, and the run of other bright and healthy 
rooms. In the crib where she pigged with her relations, slie 
often had a bit of bacon for dinner, and a red herring for 
supper. In the palace of cleanliness and comfort she is pro- 
moted to, she gets at least four meals a day, and butcher's meat 
at two of them. This, at the present price of provisions, is 16;*. 
per week, which- is more than an agricultural laborer in the 
Southern counties receives wherewith to keep a wife ami 
seven children. But, besides this, she gets a s-hilling a week f( r 
beer, and from a shilling to eighteen pence for washing. V,-. - 
sides all this she has from twelve to eighteen pounds in hajn 
cash, with occasional presents of money and dress. The wages 
of her class have been raised when they ought to have been 
lowered. The mechanic's wages are justly raised, because the 
value of money depends upon the value of the necessaries of 
life. Tliese have risen, and therefore money has sunk. But that 
rise does not affect the female servants, and it does affect those 
who feed them like fighting cocks. A droller piece of logic 
than the rise of fed servants' pocket-money because unfed serv- 
ants' wages are raised. I never encountered esaen in Anglo- 
Saxony. However, the upshot is that any half-starved seam- 
stress who will read this crude letter of mine, and make diligent 
inquiries, will find that I am riglit in the main; that domestic 



READtANA> 101 

servants are trampling too bard upon the people who are called 
their masters and mistresses; and that three thousand homes 
are open to a young woman who can prove that she is not a 
thief, and six thousand hands are offering not only plenty, but 
repletion, and liberal pocket-money to boot. The pay of a 
housemaid, in rent, fire, food, washing, beer, and pocket-money, 
is about £70 a year, and this kungry seamstresses can obtain if 
they will set about it, and without any loss of dignity: for, as a 
rule, servants nowadays hold their heads as high or a little 
higher than their mistresses do. I am, sir, 

Your faithful servant, 

CHARLES READE. 



OUTRAGES ON THE JEWS IN RUSSIA. 
To THE Editor of the "Daily Telegraph." 

Sir, — I am one of the many persons who are moved by your 
denunciation of the lawless cruelties perpetrated on the Jews in 
Russia, and the apparent connivance or apathy of the varnished 
savages who misgovern those barbarians. If the latter persist 
in that course and so make that a national crime which might 
otherwise remain the crime of numerous individuals, some great 
calamity will fall on them, or history is a blind guide; and by 
the same rule you give friendly advice when you urge our Gov- 
ernment and people to protest and wash their hands befoi'e God 
and man of this terrible crime. I fear, however, that a mere 
Government protest will be slighted or evaded by Russian men- 
dacity. Fortunately our nation can speak and act by other organs 
besides our Government, and now is the time to show ourselves 
men, and men whose hearts are horrified at the cowardly cruelty 
of this Tartar tribe to God's ancient pefople. 

Let us take a wide view of this situation, since it is so great 
and so new in our day; for wholesale persecution of the Jews is 
not of this epoch, but "a reversion" to the dark ages. One of 
the signs that distinguish a true Christian from a sham one is 
that the former studies the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures with 
care and reverence, and there learns the debt his heart, soul, 
and understanding owe to historians, poets, philosophers, 
prophets, preachers, and teachers, some writing Greek, some 
Hebrew, but every one of them Jews; and also learns to pity and 
respect the Jewish nation, though under a cloud, and to hope for 
the time when they will resume their ancient territory, which 
is so evidently kept waiting for them. This, the hope of every 
Christian, is the burning and longing desire of many, for an- 
other reason — because the prophecies w^e receive, though obscure 
in matters of detail, are clear as day on two points: That the 
Jews are to repossess Palestine, and, indeed, to rule from Leba- 



lOS READIANA. 

non to Euphratps: and that this event is to be the first of a 
great series of changes, leading to a A-ast improvement in the 
condition of poor suffering mankind and of creation in general. 
Now we have here in prospect a glorious event as sure as that 
the sun will rise to morrow. The only difference is that the sun 
will rise at a certain hour, and the Jews will occupy Syria and 
resume their national glory at an uncertain day. 

No doubt it is the foible of mankind to assume that an uncer- 
tain date must be a distant one. But that is unreasonable. 
Surely it is the duty of wise and sober men not to run before 
the Almighty in this tiling; but, on the other hand, to watch 
precursory signs and lend our humble co-operation should 
so great a privilege be accorded to us. Tliis sudden persecution 
of the Jews in the very nation where they are most numerous 
— may it not be a precursory sign and a reminder from Provi- 
dence that their abiding city is ncrf; in European Tartary? I 
almost think some such reminder was needed; for wlien I was a 
boy the pious Jews still longed for the Holy Land. They prayed 
like Daniel, with their windows open toward Jerusalem. Yet, 
BOW that the broken and impoverished Saracen would cede them 
territory at one-tenth of its agricultural and commercial value, 
a cold indifference seems to have come over them. I often won- 
der at this change of sentiment about so great a matter and in 
so short a period, comparatively speaking, and puzzle myself as 
t» the reason. Two solutions occur to me: 1. Dispersed iu 
various nations, whose average inhabitants are inferior in intel- 
Mgence and forethought to themselves, they thrive as individual 
aliens more than they may think so great a multitude of Jews 
coiild thrive in a land of theu* own, wliere blockheads would be 
scarce. 2. They have for centuries contracted their abilities to 
a limited number of peaceful arts and trades; they may distrust 
their power to diversify their abilities, and be suddenly a com- 
plete nation, with soldiers, sailors, merchants, husbandmen, as 
well as financiers and artists. 

K I should happen to be anywhere near the mark in these sug- 
gestions, let me offer a word in reply to both objections. In the first 
place, they both prove too much, for they would keep the Jews 
dispersed for ever. It is certain, therefore, they will have to be got 
over some day,and,therefore, the sooner the better. As to objection 
one, it is now proved that sojourning among inferior nations has 
more drawbacks than living at home. True, the Russian yokel 
has for years been selling to the Jews his summer labor in win- 
ter, and at a heavy discount. But the silly, improvident brute 
has turned like a wild beast upon them, and, outwitted lawfully, 
has massacred them contrary to law; and truly Solomon had 
warned them there is no animal more dangerous than a fool and 
a brute beast without understanding. Besides, they need not 
evacuate other countries in a hurry and before the resources of 
their own land are developed. Dhnidimn facti qui bene cmpit 
habet. Palestine can be colonized effectually from Russia alone, 
where there are 3,000,000 Jews trembling for life and property; 
and the rest would follow. As to the second objection, History 
is a looking-glass at our backs. Turn round and look into it 



UEADIANA. 



108 



with vour head as well as your eyes, and you shall see the 
future. Whatever Jews have done Jews may do. They are a 
people of genius, and genius is not confined by Nature, but by 
wilt by habit, or by accident. To omit to try is not to fail. 
What have this people tried heartUy and failed in? Warriors, 
writers, buUders, merchants, law-givers, husbandmen, and su- 
preme in all! . . 1 ^. T 1 4^ 

When they will consent to rise to their destiny I know not, 
but tliis I do know, that, whenever they do, not excessive calcu- 
tions but some faith, will be expected from them, as it always 
has been, as a condition of their triumphs, and they wiU prove 
equal to the occasion, and be great in the arts of peace and war. 
and their enemies melt away before them like snow oil a diJie. 
Should they seem to requure help, at starting, frona any other 
nation, blessed will be the nation that proffers it; and the nation 
that persecutes them will be made an example of m some way or 
other. Therefore, if by any chance this recent outrage should 
decide the Jewish leaders to colonize Palestine from Kussia, let 
us freely ofifer ships, seamen, money— whatever we are asked 
for. It will be a better national investment than l^gyptian, 
Brazilian, or Peruvian bonds. Meantime, I implore our divines 
to separate themselves, and all the souls under their charge, in 
all the churches and chapels of the land, from the crime of those 
picture-worshiping idolaters and cowardly murderers, by public 
disavowal and prayerful humiliation, since the monsters caU 
themselves Christians. 

Yours faithfully. 

CHARLES READE. 

3, Bloomfield Villas, Uxbridge Road. 



DIALOGUE BETWEEN A JUDaE AND A JAILER. 

To THE Editor of the " Daily Telegraph." 

Sir —At Christmas imagination runs rife; Pantomimes threat- 
en, wherein Wisdom will be kept within bounds bv fancy; and 
even in our columns I have just read a Dream, and found it in- 
teresting. May I then profit by your temporary leniency and 
intrude into the sacred Telegraph a dialogue? It is imaginary, 
but not idle; it may do good, and make Power think instead ot 
thinking it thinks— a common but hurtful habit. 

Scene— !Z7ie Old Bailey. 

The Judge. Is the Jailer present ? 

Mr. Holdfast. Here, my lord. . 

Judge. I sentence this man to four months' imprisonment, 
with bard labor: you understand? 
Holdfast. Perfectly, my lord. You mean unwholesome laboi. 



104 READIANA. 

and as much as he can do and a little more. So then when he 
falls short, we reduce his diet to increase bis strength, since it 
has proved unequal; this to be continued in a circle, and take his 
bed every now and then and let him lie on a plank. 

Judge. WhatI hard labor, yet short diet, with the addition of 
cold at night and broken rest! Why, this is not Detention, it is 
Destruction — either to man or beast. No, sir, I do not condemn 
this man to imprisonment for life — he is not a murderer — 1 give 
him just four months, no more, no less, and in that sentence it 
is clearly implied that at the end of four months he is to come 
out, improved in his habits by labor, and in his body by regular 
meals, of simple, nourishing food, with no alcohol. 

Holdfast. Excuse me, my lord; the Act of Parliament 
authorizes a jailor to reduce a prisoner's diet and inflict other 
punishments. 

Judge. Ay, at safe intervals; but not in quick repetition, nor 
in unreasonable conjunction — hard labor on the heels of priva- 
tion, and cold on the top of both. These things united soon ex- 
haust the body. Your Act of Parliament contains no clause, that 
can be read in a court of law. to repeal the law of England re- 
garding so great a matter as homicide. That immortal la\^^ 
wliich was here before these little trumpery Acts of Parliament, 
made to-day to be repealed to-morrow, and will be here after 
Parliament itself has run its course, deals with the case thus: If 
A, having the legal charge of B. and keeping him in duresse, so 
that he cannot possibly obtain the necessaries of life elsewhere, 
subjects him to privation of food, rest, etc., and otherwise so 
shortens his life directly or indirectly by sheer exhaustion of the 
body, or by any disease which is a natural result of multiplied 
privations and hardships, A can be indicted for a felony; and 
he will be tried, not by any officer of State assuming uncon- 
stitutional powers, but constitutionally, hj th". Queen in the 
person of her judge, and by the country in the person of its 
jury. 

Holdfast. They would never find a jailer guilty, not if a dozen 
of the scum die<i in theii- term of imprisonment. 

Judge. It is not for me to say. They are getting more intelli- 
gent, like the rest of us. Certainly it would be their duty to de- 
mand good evidence, and the true facts are hard to get at in a 
jail. Acton and Fleetwood destroyed many prisoners, yet were 
acquitted on trial. But at all events dismiss from your mind 
that a jailer can plead the Act of Parliament, or any purely 
legal defense, to bloodless destruction of a British subject in 
duresse. Keep strictly to my sentence. It is not only the sen- 
tence of the Queen and the law, but it is expressly projiortioned 
to the verdict of the country. Four months in a hOuse of deten- 
tion, not destruction, a house of correction, not a subtle sham- 
bles. The sentence has two hmits, hoth equally absolute. If, 
during the four months, you turn this man into the street, you 
are indictable for a misdemeanor; if, during the four months, 
you thrust him cannily into his grave, you are indictable for a 
felony; and, should I be the judge to try you, it will be my duty 
to tell the jury that you took this prisoner, not from the clouds, 



READIANA. 



105 



nor from any Government oflficial, with no power to sentence 
man, woman, nor child, where T sit, but from me: and that I 
sentenced him, in your hearing, to four months' imprisonment, 
and not to imprisonment for life. 

I am, sir, 

Your obedient servant, 

CHARLES READE. 
Kniqhusbbidge, Christmas Day. 



[the end.] 



OTTT ODP the: Aa:xx^£i 

aaany a faTnil;^ has been raised by the genuine philantrophy c| 
modem progress and of malem opportmiities. But many people da 
aot avail of them. They jog along in their old ways until thQ|p an 
etn<dE fast in a mire of hopeless dM. Friends desert them, fosrthey 
have already deserted themselves by neglecting their own beat ioteFesta. 
Out of the dirt of Mtcben, or Lall or parlor, any hoase caa bo quicldy 
bsooght by tha oaeofSapoUo which is sold by all grooci^ at lOo. a cakai 



SOCIAL SOLUMOJNb 

{Solutions Sociales). 

Bj M. G-ODIN, 

FoimOef of the FamUlsth e at Guise ; Prominent Leader of Irultistries in 
Vrance ana Belgium ; Member of the National Assemblv. 

TRANSLATki) FROM THE FBENCH BY 

MAEIE HOWTJ^D. 



I vol., l2mo, illu strated, c loth gilt, $1.50. 

An admirable English translation of M. Godin's statement of the 
course of study which led him to conceive the Strcial Palace at Guise, 
France. There is no question that this publicatioii will mark an era 
in the growth of the labor question. It should serve ab tho manual for 
organized labor in its present cont«st, since its teachings will as surely 
lead to the destruction of the wages system as the abolitiuin Movement 
lead to that of chattel slavery. 



JOHN W. LOVELL CO., PublisLers, 

14 and 16 Vesey Street, N EiV YOUK, 




WISHING zmmm 

EVER IWVENTEO- 
ISo Lady, Elarried off 
Single, Rich or Poor, 
iEousekeep ing or Board" 
icg» will be "without it 
£,£iber testini^ its utilitj- 
Sold by all fipst-ela«B 
Oroeers, but beware a*? 



LOVELL'S LIBRARY. 

3L.A.TEST ISSUES. 



S20 Shane Fadh'sWedding,by Carleton.20 
621 Larry McFarland's Wake, by Wil- 
liam Carleton 10 

822 The Party Fight and Funenil, by 

William Carleton 10 

823 The Midnight Mass, by Caileton. ..10 
884 Phil I'mcel. by William Carleton. 10 

825 An Irish Oath, by garleton 10 

826 Going to Maynooth, by Carleton. ..10 

837 Phelim O'Toole's Conrtbhip, by 

William Carleton 10 

828 Dommick the Poor Scholar, by 

William Carleton 10 

829 Neal Maloi.e, by William Carleton. .10 

830 Twilight Club Tracts, by Wingate.i-'O 

831 The Son of His Falher.by Oliphant.20 
t<3a SirPercival, by J. H. Shorthouse..lO 
&33 A Voy.ige to the Cape, by Russell. .20 

834 Jack's Courtship, by Rui^sell 20 

835 A S.iilor's Sweetheart, by Russell. .20 
&36 On the Fo'k'sle Head, by Russell. ..20 
8.i7 M .rkeil '-In Haste," by Roosevelt. .20 

838 The George- Hewitt Campaign 20 

839 The Guilty River, bv Collins 10 

840 By Woman's Wit, by Alex:inder.. ..2(1 
8il Dr. Cupid, by Rhoda Bimighton. ..20 
81i The World Went Very Well Then, 

by Walter Besant 20 

813 My Lord and My Lady, by Mrs. 
Forrester 20 

841 Dolore-*, by Mrs. Forrester '20 

845 I Have Lived and Loved, by Jlrs. 

Forrester 2(i 

846 An Algonquin Maiden, by Adams. .20 

847 The Ho'y Rose, by WtiUi r Besant. 10 
S48 She, by H. Rider Haggard 2ii 

849 Handy Andy, liy Samuel L'jver '.0 

850 My Hero, by Mis. Forrester 20 

851 Loraa Doonc, by Ulackmnre.P't I.. .21) 

851 LornaBoono, bv Blackmore, P'tll.20 

852 Friendship, bv buid.T 20 

854 Signa, by Ouida 2(1 

855 Pasoaiel. bv Ouida 20 

856 Golden Bi il.s, by B. L. Farjeon. .. . 10 

857 A Willful young W. 'man . . .' 20 

858 A Modem Telemachus, by Yonge.20 

859 Viva, by Mr.^. Forrester 20 

860 Omnia Vaiiiia*, by Mrs. Forrester. 10 

861 Diana Carew, by Mrs. Forr ster. 20 

862 From Olympus to Hades, by Mrs. 

Forrester 20 

863 Rhona, by Mrs. Forrester 20 

864 Roy and Viola, by Mrs. Forrester .. 20 
8(j5 June, by Mrs. Forrester 20 

866 M:gnon, Mr^. Forrester 20 

867 A Young Man's Fnucy, by Mrs. 

Forrester " 20 

8(i8 One Thing Needful, by Braddon..20 

869 Barbara, by :M E. Braddon 20 

870 John March mont's Leg.icy, by M. 

E. Bradilon 20 

871 Jo.«hiia Haggard's Daughter, by 

M. E. Braddon 20 

yr=i Taki^n ai. the Flood, by Braddon. ..20 



Asphodel, by M. B. Braddon 20 

Nine of Hearts, by B. L. Farjeon. .20 
Little Tu'penny, by Baring-Gould.lO 
The Witch's Head, by H. Rider 

Haggard .20 

The Doctor's Wife, by Braddon.... 20 
Only a Clod, by M. E. Braddon. . . .20 
Sir Jasper's Tenant, by Braddon .. 20 
Lady's Mile, by M. E. Braddon .... 20 
Biids of Prey, by M. B. Braddon. .20 
Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. 

Braddon 20 

Rupert Godwin, by M. E. Braddon. 20 
The Son of Monte Cristo, Part I.. .20 
The Son of Monte Ciislo, Part 11.. .20 

Monte Cristo and his Wife 20 

Strangers and Pilgrims, by M. E. 

Braddon 20 

A Strange World,by M. E. Braddon. 20 
Mount Royal, by M. E. Braddon... 20 

Just as I am, by M. B. Braddon 20 

Dead Men's Shoes, bv Braddon... 20 
The Countess of Monte Cri.sto.P't. 1.20 
The Countess of Monte Cristo, 

Ft. II 20 

Hostages to Fortune, by M. E. 

Braddon 20 

Teuton's Quest, by M. B. Braddon. 20 
The Cloven Foot, by M. E. Brafldon.20 
Moonshine, by Frederic Allison 

Tupper 20 

Murjorie, by B. M. Cla v 20 

Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte. . . .20 
Joan Wentworth by Katherine S.20 

M.icquoid 

Love and Life, by Yotige 20 

Jess, by H. Rider Haggard 20 

Clmilcs Auchester, by E. Berger. . .20 
1 he Mystery, by Mrs. Henry Wood. 20 
'I he Master Passion, by Marryat. .20 
A Lucky Disappointment, by Flor- 
ence Mirrvat Itj 

Her Loi d and Master, by Marryat. 2(.' 

My Own Child, by Marryat 2(1 

No Intentions, by Florence Miirryat. 2(1 

Written in Fire, by Mwryat 20 

A Little Stepson, by Miur\at... 10 
Wih Ci;pid's lijes, by Marryat. ..20 ' 
Not Like Other Girls, by Rosa 

Nnuchette Carey , 2f 

Robert Ord's Atogement, by Bosa 

Noiichctte Carey .20 

Griffiih Gaunt, by Charles Reade... 20 
A Terrible Temptation, by Reade. .20 
Very Hard Cash, by Charles Reade.20 
It is Never Too Late to Mend, by 

Charles Repde 20 

The Knightsbridge Mystery, by 

Charles Reade 10 

A Wiiman Hater, by Cliarles Reade.20 
Reiiili;ina, by Charles Reade. ... 10 
John : A Love Story, by Mrs. Oli- 

pharit 20 

The Merry Men, by Stevenson 20 



Any of the above can be obtained from all book.sellel 
s'-.it free by mail, on receipt of price, by the publisheij^^ 

JOHN W. LOVELL a 

Nos. 14 AND 16 Vesey Stki 



,d nevvsdealer-s, or v.- ill b* 



^. 




The treatment of many thousands of 
cases of those chronic weaknesses and 
distressing ailments peculiar to females, 
at the Invalids' Hotel and Surg-ical In- 
stitute, Buffalo, N. Y., has afforded a 
vast experience in nicelj' adapting and 
thoroughly testing remedies for the 
cure of woman's peculiar maladies. 

Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescrip- 
tion is the outgrowth, or result, of this 
great and valuable experience. Thou- 
sands of testimonials received from pa- 
tients and from physicians who have 
tested it in the more aggravated and 
obstinate cases which had baffled their 
skill, prove it to be the most wonderful 
remedy ever devised for the relief and 
cure of suffering women. It is not rc- 
tx)mmended as a "cure-all," but as a 
most perfect Specific for woman's 
peculiar ailments. 

As a powerfnl, invigorating^ 
tonic it imparts strength to the whole 
system, and to the uterus, or womb and 
its appendages, in particular. For over- 
worked, "worn-out," "run-down," de- 
bilitated teachers, milliners, dreismak- 
ers, seamstresses, "shop-gir',3," house- 
keepers, nursing mothers, and feeble 
women generally. Dr. Pierce's Favorite 
Prescription is the greatest earthly boon, 
being unequalled as an appeti&ing cor- 
dial and restorative tonic. It promotes 
digestion and assimilation of food, cures 
nausea, weakness of stomach, indiges- 
tion, bloating and eructations of gas. 

As a sootliing and strengthen- 
ing nervine, " Favorite Prescription " 
is unequalled and is invaluable in allay- 
ing and subduing nervous excitability, 
irritability, exhaustion, prostration, hys- 
teria, spasms and other distressing, nerv- 
ous symptoms commonly attendant upon 
functional and organic disease of the 
womb. It induces refreshing sleep and 
relieves mental anxiety and f" ^pond- 
cncy. 

Dr. Pierce's Favorite - — '•rip- 
tion is a legitin*"' cine, 

■ carefully compo'" rienc- 

ed and skillful lapted 

to woman's d'^ It is 

purely vegetf ,.wOii and 



perfectly harmless in its effects in any 
condition of the system. , 

"Favorite- Prescription" is a 
positive cure for the most compli- 
cated and obstinate cases of leucorrhea, 
or " whites," excessive flowing at month- 
ly periods, painful menstruation, unnat- . 
ural suppressions, prolapsus or falling 
of the womb, weak back, " fiemale weak- 
ness," antevei'sion, retroversion, bearing- 
down sensations, chronic congestion, in- 
flammation and ulceration of the womb, 
inflammation, pain and tenderness in 
ovaries, accompanied with internal heat. 

In pregnancy, " Favorite Prescrip- 
tion" is a " mother's ooi-dial," relieving 
nausea, weakness of stomach and other 
distressing symptoms common to that 
condition. If its use is kept up in the 
latter months of gestation, it so prepares 
the system for delivery as to greatly 
lessen, and many times almost entirely 
do away with the sutterings of that try- 
ing ordeal. 

"Favorite Prescription," when 
taken in connection with the use of 
Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery, 
and small laxative doses of Dr. Pierce's 
Purgative Pellets (Little Liver ■ Pills), 
cures Liver, ■ Kidney and Bladder dis- 
eases. Their combined use also removes 
blood taints, and abolishes cancerous 
and scrofulous humors from the system. 

Treating tlie Wrong Disease.— 
Many times Avomen call on their family 
pliysicians, suffering, as they iriiagine, 
one from dyspepsia, another from heart 
disease, another from liver or kidney 
disease,- another from nervous exhaus- 
tion or prostration, another with pain 
here or there, and in this way they all 
present alike to themselves and their 
easy-going and indifferent, or over-busy 
doctor, separate and distinct diseases, 
for wJiich ho prescribes his pills and 
potions, assuming them to be such, 
when, in reality, they ai-e all only symp- 
toms caused by some A\onib disorder. 
The phj'sician, ignorant of the cause of 
suffering, encourages his practice until 
large bills are made. The sviffering pa- 
tient gets no better, but probably worse 
by reason of the delay, wrong treatment 
and consequent complications. A prop- 
er medicine, like Dr. Pierce's' Favorite 
Prescription, directed to the cause would 
have entirely removed the disease, there- 
by dispelling all those distressing symp- 
toms, and instituting comfort instead of 
prolonged misery. 

"Favorite Prescription" is the 
only medicine for women sold, by drug- 
gists, under a positive guarantee, 
from the manufacturers, that it will 
give satisfaction in every case, or money 
will be refunded. This guarantee has 
been printed on the bottle-wrapper, and 
faithfully cari-ied out for manv years. 
liarge bottles (100 doses) $1.00, or 
six bottles for $5.00. 

K^^Send ten cents in stamps for Dr. 

Pierce's large, illustrated Treatise (160 

pages) on Diseases of Women. Address, 

World's Dispensary. Medical Association, 

NO. 668 Main Street, BUFFALO, N. Y. 




Bears* Transparent Shaving Stick. 

lOOyears established as the cleanest and best preparation for SHAVING, it 
' makes a profuse, Creamy, and Fragrant Lather,which leaves the Skin smooth, clean,oool 
jnd comfortable. SOAP & CASE \J. 

TDT? ATPQ' QO A"P *^^ Great English Complexion Soap, is sold 
r^HfAlxo OVjAx , throughout the United States, and all othe« 
parts of the world, and its praises are heard and echoed everywhere. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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